Instructor:

Eli Tziperman, office hours: please see FAS course web page.

TF:

Xiaoting Yang, Xiaoting_Yang@g.harvard.edu. Office Hours: see FAS course web page.

Day, time:

Tuesday, Thursday, 1:30-2:45.

Location:

Geological Museum, 24 Oxford St, third floor, room 375

Field Trip!

To the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/ WHOI, obligatory & fun; hosted by Dr. Bob Pickart; Friday, March 27, 2020. Departing 7am, returning around 6pm.

Matlab

will be used for HW and class demonstrations. If you would like a refresher, consider the Matlab boot camp, 3-4 lectures during the beginning of the term. Register here.

Section:

time and location: see FAS course web page.

Source materials:

Here. To access from outside campus or from the Harvard wireless network, use the VPN software available from the FAS software download site.

Important past events…:

 

• WHOI field trip. In previous trips we visited the R/V Atlantis, R/V Knorr, R/V Armstrong, the submersible Alvin, and we toured WHOI labs. Photos: 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018.
• EPS 131 Oscars (video project) events: 2005: surface waves; 2008: internal waves; 2010: great Pacific garbage patch; 2012: thermohaline circulation; 2014: surface waves; 2016: brine rejection; 2018: phase speed in 2d; 2020: sweet viscosity;
• zeta vs xi (ζ vs ξ) competition: 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020.

Requirements:

Homework will be assigned every 9-10 days (40% of course grade, lowest grade dropped). Each student will give a short (10 min) presentation (details), which, together with a small-group video project (examples above) and/ or a wikipedia entry-writing project, will constitute another 30%. The final exam will be an open-book take-home (30%).

Collaboration policy: we strongly encourage you to discuss and work on homework problems with other students and with the teaching staff. However, after discussions with peers, you need to work through the problems yourself and ensure that any answers you submit for evaluation are the result of your own efforts, reflect your own understanding and are written in your own words. You must appropriately cite any books, articles, websites, lectures, etc that have helped you with your work.

Course materials are the property of the instructional staff, or other copyright holders, and are provided for your personal use. You may not distribute them or post them on websites without permission of the course instructor.

Contents

1 Outline

Observations and fundamentals of ocean dynamics, from the role of the oceans in global climate and climate change to beach waves. Topics include the greenhouse effect, oceans and global warming; El Niño evens in the equatorial Pacific Ocean; currents: the wind driven ocean circulation and the Gulf stream; coastal upwelling and fisheries; temperature, salinity, the overturning circulation and its effect on global climate stability and variability; wave motions: surface ocean waves, internal waves, tsunamis and tides; ocean observations by ships, satellites, moorings, floats and more.

A field trip to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod will be held during the course, which will be an opportunity to learn about sea-going oceanography.

Prerequisite: Mathematics 21a, 21b; Physical Sciences 12a, Physics 15a or Applied Physics 50a; or equivalents/ permission of instructor.

Software for scientific computation and graphics will be introduced (students may choose either Matlab or python), which will be used for some homework assignments.

2 Syllabus

Detailed syllabus, directory with all source materials and lecture notes.

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, Ekman
   downloads;
   
7. The thermohaline circulation
   downloads;
8. Horizontal circulation II: Gulf Stream and other western boundary currents, vorticity, Rossby waves
   downloads;
   
9. El Nino
   downloads;
10. Time permitting:
    1. Abrupt climate change
       downloads;

3 Additional readings

Beginning texts:

• John A. Knauss, Introduction to Physical Oceanography, 320 pages; 2nd edition, 2005.
• J. Marshall and R. A. Plumb, Atmosphere, ocean, and climate dynamics, Elsevier Academic Press, Burlington, MA, USA, 2008, 319pp.
• Lynne D. Talley, George L. Pickard, William J. Emery and James H. Swift, Descriptive Physical Oceanography - An Introduction, 2011 (sixth edition) available on-line at
  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/book/9780750645522
• Stephen Pond and George L. Pickard, Introductory dynamical Oceanography, 3rd edition, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1993.
• Open university: Ocean Circulation (Second Edition); Evelyn Brown, Angela Colling, Dave Park, John Phillips, Dave Rothery and John Wright
• Open university: Waves, Tides and Shallow-Water Processes, Second Edition;
• (St) Robert H. Stewart, on-line physical oceanography book
• On-line version of ’Regional oceanography’

Intermediate texts:

• Philander, S. G. H., El Nino, La Nina, and the Southern Oscillation., Academic Press, 1990,
• (Ku) Kundo P.K. and Cohen I.M., Fluid mechanics. 2nd edition 2002.
• Benoit Cushman-Roisin, Introduction to geophysical fluid dynamics, Prentice-Hall, 1995,

Advanced texts:

• Vallis, G., 2005, Atmospheric and oceanic fluid dynamics, fundamentals and large-scale circulation, Cambridge University Press.
• 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

4 Links

• Coriolis force movies and resources: here, here, and here.
• A nice El Niño animation
• Greenpeace “bottom trawling” and Greenpeace “save our seas”, see here.
• Shifting baselines: “pristine”;
• NOVA program about the Sumatra Tsunami of 2004 here;
• Ocean acidification NRDC video
• PBS “ocean adventures” videos, in particular: Orca (killer whales) hunting (5 min); the great Pacific garbage patch (4 minutes);
• Ocean data sources: Marine Explorer, Ocean Data Viewer, and the IRI/LDEO Climate Data Library.
• A day in the life of a fluid dynamicist