SIO 210: Introduction to Physical Oceanography

Fall 2003

Instructors: Lynne Talley, Paul Robbins, and Myrl Hendershott

Time: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 11:00-11:50

Location: NEW AS OF OCTOBER 3: Vaughan Hall 100

Equatorial Pacific SST, courtesy of NOAA

FINAL exams and final course grades: available from Ms. Tomomi Ushii in Nierenberg Hall 310. (x49696)

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. Since math courses might have been taken many years ago for some students, please check this math concept link, and attend the math tutorials at the beginning of the quarter if you want a refresher.

The course url is http://gyre.ucsd.edu/sio210. 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.

Course requirements: two graded exams. Study questions will be provided throughout the course, but will not be graded.

Syllabus

Links will become available as lectures are approached.

Sep 26: Lect. 1: Course Overview: What is Physical Oceanography? [Talley]
Sep 29: Lect. 2: Basic equations of motion [Talley]
Oct 1: Lect. 3: Mixing and diffusion [Talley]
Oct 3: Lect. 4: Dynamics of fluids with rotation [Talley]
Oct 6: Lect. 5: Properties of seawater I [Robbins]
Oct 8: Lect. 6: Properties of seawater II [Robbins]
Oct 10: Lect. 7: Waves [Hendershott]
Oct 13: Lect. 8: Tides [Hendershott]
Oct 15: Lect. 9: Internal Waves [Hendershott]
Oct 17: Lect. 10: Waves completed [Hendershott]
Oct 20: Lect. 11: Atmospheric circulation [Robbins]
Oct 22: Lect. 12: Geostrophy, thermal wind, dynamic height [Robbins]
Oct 24: Lect. 13: Wind forcing circulation and ocean response (Ekman, Sverdrup)[Robbins]
Oct 27: UCSD closed due to fire
Oct 29: UCSD closed due to fire
Oct 31: Rescheduled MID-TERM EXAM
Nov 3: Lect. 14: Eastern Boundary Currents [Robbins]
Nov 5: Lect. 15: Equatorial circulation [Robbins]
Nov 7: Lect. 16: N. Pacific and N. Atlantic upper ocean circulation [Talley]. Also see 2002 lecture on wind-driven circulation mechanisms and look at Ocean Circulation article in Munn Book chapters in the SIO Electronic Reserves
Nov 10: Lect. 16 continued: N. Pacific and N. Atlantic upper ocean circulation continued [Talley]
Nov 12: Lect. 17: Southern hemisphere upper ocean circulation [Talley]
Nov 13: Lect. 18: Water masses, upper ocean water mass formation mechanisms [Talley]
Nov 14: Lect. 19: N. Pacific and N. Atlantic upper ocean water masses [Talley]
Nov 17: Lect. 20: Southern hemisphere upper ocean water masses [Talley]
Nov 18: Lect. 21: Buoyancy forcing and abyssal circulation theory[Robbins]
Nov 19: Lect. 22: Deep water formation mechanisms [Robbins]
Nov 21: Lect. 23: Deep water formation observations [Robbins]
Nov 24: Lect. 24: Return of abyssal flow, role of mixing [Robbins]
Nov 26: Lect. 25: Global circulation summary, property transports and budgets [Robbins]
This lecture probably cancelled or scheduled in non-class time: Observational Tools / Aquarium Field Trip Meet at Aquarium, East Classroom [Talley]
Nov 28: Thanksgiving
Dec 1: Lect. 26: Analysis tools, seasonal variability [Robbins]
Dec 3: Lect. 27: Interannual variability (including ENSO) [Talley]
Dec 5: Lect. 28: Decadal and longer-term variability [Talley]
Dec 10: FINAL EXAM (11:30 - 2:30 NTV 330)

Math tutorial: Monday 12-1 September 29 through October 20. Replaced with regular class tutorial.

Class tutorials: Tuesday 9-10 and Tuesday 12-1 every week. Also Monday 12-1 starting Nov. 17.

Exam preparation tutorials: Monday Dec. 8 11-12; Tuesday Dec. 9 9-10 and 12-1

Relevant Texts

On reserve at library

Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics. by Adrian Gill
Regional Oceanography: An Introduction. by Matthias Tomczak and Stuart Godfrey. (Link is to free download of pdf. Text is out of print.)
An Introduction to Physical Oceanography by William von Arx.
Evolution of Physical Oceanography edited by Bruce Warren and Carl Wunsch
Descriptive Physical Oceanography: An Introduction. by George Pickard and William Emery (See "Online texts" below for updated chapters.)

Online texts, not on reserve

Introduction to Physical Oceanography. by Robert Stewart. This is an online text only. The pdf version is up-to-date. The html version has errors (information from R. Stewart).
Descriptive Physical Oceanography, draft of new edition. by William Emery, Lynne Talley and George Pickard. This is a draft revision that will be copyrighted and published. Please do not use material for any purposes other than this class. As of November, 2003: Chapters 1, 2, 3,4, 5 only.

Online Resources

Electronic Reserves at the SIO library. If you want to connect to this from outside UCSD, you will first need to go to this site: http://scilib.ucsd.edu/sio/guide/proxy.html and follow the directions to obtain a link.
Talley, Robbins, Hendershott. Online notes for SIO 210 from Fall, 2002. The fall, 2003 course is reorganized from these notes.
Lynne Talley. Online notes for SIO 210 from Fall, 2000.
An online bibliography
Properties of seawater - matlab, fortran, c subroutines

Contact Information

Lynne Talley; Nierenberg Hall 305; 534-6610 Home Page ltalley@ucsd.edu

Paul Robbins; Nierenberg Hall 448; 534-6366 Home Page probbins@ucsd.edu

Last modified: Mon Dec 15 2003