SIO 210

SIO 210: Introduction to Physical Oceanography

Scripps Institution of Oceanography
University of California San Diego

Fall 2009
Instructors: Myrl Hendershott, Clinton Winant, Uwe Send, and Jennifer MacKinnon
Time: Monday, Wednesday, Friday 2:00-2:50

Location: Vaughan 100

Equatorial Pacific SST, courtesy of NOAA

Course Overview

Physical description of the sea; physical properties of seawater, methods and measurements, boundary processes, regional oceanography. Prerequisites: the mathematics and physics required for admission to the graduate curriculum in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, or consent of the instructor.

The course url is http://www-pord.ucsd.edu/~jen/sio210.

Office hours: tba

Syllabus

The notes and figures are background for the coursework. They are evolving and informal. They may not be used for other purposes without permission. Figures from copyrighted sources include the reference. Updated links will be made available as lectures are given.

Note that while some of the figures shown in class will be provided here, there is significant material presented on the board in most classes.

Sep 25: Fluxes and Continuum Approximation [Winant]
Sep 28: Budgets [Winant]
Sep 30: Momentum in an inertial coordinate system [Winant]
Oct 2: The effect of rotation [Winant]
Oct 5: Physical Properties of Seawater [MacKinnon]
Oct 7: Typical Distributions/Ocean Structure [MacKinnon]
Oct 9: Sound and Acoustics [Send]
Oct 12: Light and Optics [Send]
Oct 14: The Atmosphere [Hendershott]
Oct 16: Geostrophy and thermal wind [Winant]
Oct 19: Geostrophy / Ekman [Winant]
Oct 21: Ekman continued [Winant]
Oct 23: Basin Circulation [Winant]
Oct 26: Mid-term Exam
Oct 28: Heat/freshwater fluxes and transport [Send]
Oct 30: Upper Atlantic Ocean Circulation [Send]
Nov 2: Deep Atlantic Ocean Circulation [Send] Overflow movie Surface current movie
Nov 4: Pacific, Indian, Southern Ocean Circulation I [Send]
Nov 6: Pacific, Indian, Southern Ocean Circulation II [Send]
Nov 9: Waves 1 [Hendershott]
Nov 11: Veterans Day Holiday
Nov 13: Waves 2 [Hendershott]
Nov 16: Internal Waves [MacKinnon]
Nov 18: Observational methods [Send] Movie
Nov 20: Tides 1 [Hendershott]
Nov 23: no class
Nov 25: Stirring and Mixing [MacKinnon]
Nov 27: Thanksgiving Holiday
Nov 30: ENSO and Decadal climate variability [Hendershott]
Dec 2: Global overturning circulation [MacKinnon]
Dec 4: Review
Dec 9 Final exam 3-6pm. Venue tba.

Assignments

HW1: due 2 October

         Solution to HW1

HW2: due 9 October

         Solution to HW2

HW3: due 14 October

         Solution to HW 3

HW4: due 22 October

          Solution to HW 4

HW 5: due 30 Nov

Mid-term solutions

Instructors will set assignments individually in class, including format and due dates.

This couse is offered for letter grade. Grade will be based on: homework (35%), midterm (25%), and final exam (40%).

Primary texts - online

Descriptive Physical Oceanography: An Introduction, draft of new 6th edition. by Lynne Talley, George Pickard, William Emery and James Swift. Link will be distributed on the first day of class.
Introduction to Physical Oceanography. by Robert Stewart. This is an open source, online text ony, which includes a printable pdf and cover. The pdf version is the most up-to-date.
Regional Oceanography: An Introduction. by Matthias Tomczak and Stuart Godfrey. (Link is to free download of pdf. Text is out of print.)

Other relevant texts, on reserve at library

Invitation to Oceanography by Paul Pinet. Online study tools.
Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics by Adrian Gill pdf of Appndix 2 (properties of seawater)
Evolution of Physical Oceanography edited by Bruce Warren and Carl Wunsch
Descriptive Physical Oceanography: An Introduction. (Fifth Edition) by George Pickard and William Emery (See "Online texts" above for updated chapters.)
Ocean Circulation and Climate: observing and modelling the global ocean. Ed. G. Siedler, J. Church and J. Gould, Academic Press, 2001.
Ocean Circulation. Open University Press, Pergamon.

Online resources

Seawater matlab routines (for calculating everything from potential density to specific heat to ...)
Basic math refreshers: Wolfram MathWorld
Munn, T., Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change (selected pages in pdf for atmospheric circuation lecture)
Proprties of seawater from the UNESCO tables, in fortran, matlab and c

Talley, Hendershott. Fall, 2007.
Talley, Robbins, Hendershott. Fall, 2006.
Talley, Robbins, Hendershott. Fall, 2005.
Talley, Robbins, Hendershott. Fall, 2004.
Talley, Robbins, Hendershott. Fall, 2002.
Talley, Hendershott. Fall, 2000.
An outdated online bibliography
A nice collection of classic papers on large-scale ocean circulation and related topics (Geoff Vallis, Princeton University)

Some previous exams

Contact Information

Myrl Hendershott; CCS Bldg 303, 534-3208, mhendershott@ucsd.edu
Clinton Winant; CCS Bldg 202 , 534-2067, cwinant@ucsd.edu
Uwe Send; NH 446 ,822-6710, usend@ucds.edu
Jennifer MacKinnon, OAR 260, 822-3716, jmackinnon@ucsd.edu