Introduction to physical oceanography and climate

Course web page for EPS 131 (Spring 2010)

Instructor:

Eli Tziperman, office hours: Tue 2-3.

TF:

Nathan Arnold, narnold-at-fas.harvard.edu, tel: 617-496-6352, office: Geological Museum, 24 Oxford St, room 401. Office Hours: TBA, Geol. Mus 401;

Day, time:

Monday, Thursday, 2:30-4.

Location:

University Museum (24 Oxford St), first floor, room 105 (Daly Seminar Rm)

Matlab Intro Session:

date TBA (Feb 2010) time TBA, location: TBA

Section:

time TBA, location: TBA.

Field trip to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI): (DATE TBA) 2010; We'll be leaving Cambridge very early in the morning, back in the late afternoon. Our Host will be Dr. Bob Pickart; last time we visited to the R/V Atlantis and the submersible Alvin, plus toured the labs of WHOI; photos;

The 2008 movie competition: here;

The 2008 zeta vs xi competition: here;

Textbooks

• (Kn) J. A. Knauss, introduction to physical oceanography, 2nd edition, 1996, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

• (St) Robert H. Stewart, on-line physical oceanography book
• On-line version of 'Regional oceanography'
• (OU) The open university team, ocean circulation, 2nd ed, 2002.
• (OU-W) The open university team, waves, tides and shallow water processes, 2nd ed, 2002.
• (Ku) Kundo P.K. and Cohen I.M., Fluid mechanics. 2nd edition 2002.

Outline

This course will cover observations and the understanding of ocean phenomena from local surface beach waves to the effects of the oceans on global climate. We will discuss ocean waves, the Coriolis force and ocean currents, the large scale temperature and salinity distributions and more. As part of the ocean's role in climate we will cover the wind-driven circulation and the Gulf stream, the thermohaline circulation and the potential instability of Europe's climate due to global warming, El Nino events in the equatorial Pacific ocean, and more. The basic fluid dynamics equations will be gradually introduced. A field trip to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Code will be held during the course, which will be an opportunity to learn about practical aspects of sea-going oceanography as well.

The students will be introduced to the Matlab software for scientific computation and graphics, which will be used for some of the homework assignments.

Prerequisite: Mathematics/ Applied Mathematics 21, Physics 15/ 11, or equivalents, or permission of instructor.

Syllabus

Detailed lecture notes, other supporting material.

1. Outline and motivation
   

2. Temperature and salinity
   downloads;

3. Horizontal circulation I: currents, Coriolis force
   downloads;

4. Waves and oscillations I: basics
   downloads;

5. Sea-going physical oceanography Finally, the real stuff. Two lectures by Dr. Bob Pickart from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and a field trip to Woods Hole.

6. Friction moving icebergs and feeding the fish
   downloads;
   

7. The thermohaline circulation
   downloads;

8. Horizontal circulation II: Gulf Stream and other western boundary currents
   downloads;
   

9. El Nino
   downloads

10. Abrupt climate change
    downloads;

11. Some fluid dynamics fundamentals
    downloads;

12. Waves and oscillations II: deep ocean waves and waves affected by the Coriolis force
    downloads;

13. Misc Advanced topics (time permitting);

Additional reading

• G. L. Pickard and W. J. Emery, Descriptive Physical Oceanography - An Introduction, Butterworth Heinemann, 1990,
• Stephen Pond and George L. Pickard, Introductory dynamical Oceanography, 3rd edition, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1993,

• Philander, S. G. H., El Nino, La Nina, and the Southern Oscillation., Academic Press, 1990,
• Benoit Cushman-Roisin, Introduction to geophysical fluid dynamics, Prentice-Hall, 1995,

• Pedlosky, J., 1987, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics., 2nd edition, Springer-Verlag
• Pedlosky, J., 1996, ocean circulation theory, Springer-Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York.
• Pedlosky, J., 2003, waves in the ocean and atmosphere., Springer-Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York.
• Gill, A. E, 1982, Atmosphere-ocean dynamics, Academic Press, London

Requirements

Semi-weekly homework will be given throughout the course. The best 90% of the homework will constitute 40% of the final grade. Each student will be invited to present a brief informal description of some aspects of the ocean circulation and its role in climate and possibly do a class presentation of a fluid experiment (20%), see details here for a list of possible subjects. The final exam may be a take home (40%).

Links

• This course was previously taught by Prof Allan Robinson
• Coriolis force movies: here and here;
• Greenpeace bottom trawling; Greenpeace ``save our seas''; and videos.
• Shifting baselines: ``pristine'';
• NOVA video about the Sumatra Tsunami of 2004 56 minutes;
• Three dimensional bottom topographies for any lon/lat coordinates: here.
• PBS ``ocean adventures'' videos, in particular: Orca (killer whales) hunting (5 min); the great Pacific garbage patch (4 minutes);
• Recipe for internal ocean waves in a bottle: here (basically blue food coloring in water filling 3/4 of a bottle, and the rest filled with oil).