SIO 210

SIO 210: Introduction to Physical Oceanography

Scripps Institution of Oceanography
University of California San Diego

OLD OLD

Fall 2005

OLD OLD
Instructors: Lynne Talley, Paul Robbins, and Myrl Hendershott
Time: Monday, Wednesday, Friday 2:00-2:50

Location: Vaughan Hall 100

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://www-pord.ucsd.edu/~ltalley/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; 2 written reports. Study questions will be provided throughout the course, but will not be graded.

Syllabus

Note: many lecture links are out of date/incorrect. Updated links will become available as lectures are approached.

Sep 23: Lect. 1: Course Overview: [Robbins and Talley]
Sep 26: Lect. 2: Physical Properties of Seawater I [Robbins]
Sep 28: Lect. 3: Physical Properties of Seawater II [Robbins]
Sep 30: Lect. 4: Typical Distributions/Ocean Structure I [Robbins]
Oct 3: Lect. 5: Typical Distributions/Ocean Structure II [Robbins]
Oct 5: Lect. 6: Advection/Transports/Budgets I [Robbins]
Oct 7: Lect. 7: Advection/Transports/Budgets II [Robbins]
Oct 10: Lect. 8: Dynamics I (momentum) [Talley]
Oct 12: Lect. 9: Waves/Tides I [Hendershott]
Oct 14: Lect. 10: Waves/Tides II [Hendershott]
Oct 17: Lect. 11: Waves/Tides III [Hendershott]
Oct 19: Lect. 12: Waves/Tides IV [Hendershott]
Oct 21: Lect. 13: Dynamics II (rotation) [Talley]
Oct 24: Lect. 14: Atmospheric circulation/surface forcing [Robbins]
Oct 26: Lect. 15: Dynamics III (Geostrophy) [Talley]
Oct 28: Lect. 16: Dynamics IV (Ekman) [Talley]
Oct 31: Lect. 17: Dynamics V (Sverdrup balance and western boundary currents) [Talley]
Nov 2: Mid-term Exam (covers through lecture on Oct. 28)
Nov 4: Lect. 18: Instrumentation [Robbins]
Nov 7: Lect. 19: Data analysis [Robbins]
Nov 9: Lect. 20: Pacific Ocean (upper) [Robbins]
Nov 11: Veterans Day Holiday
Nov 14: Lect. 21: Pacific Ocean (equatorial and eastern boundary currents) [Robbins]
Nov 16: Lect. 22: Pacific Ocean (ENSO) [Robbins]
Nov 18: Lect. 23: Atlantic (upper ocean) [Talley]
Nov 21: Lect. 24: Atlantic (deep, meridional overturning circulation) [Talley]
Nov 23: Lect. 25: Indian Ocean (monsoons, subtropical, overturning) [Talley]
Nov 25: Thanksgiving
Nov 28: Lect. 26: Southern Ocean [Talley]
Nov 30: Lect. 27: Global summary [Talley]
Dec 2: Lect. 28: Climate variability (decadal) [Talley]
Dec. 7 (9AM-12): Final exam

FINAL EXAMS can be picked up in Nierenberg Hall 310 (Tomomi Ushii x49696)

Answers to assignments
Waves notes (Hendershott) 11/05
Book Assignments (pdf)
Data analysis Assignments
Math tutorial: Day and time to be determined (1 per week through first half of course)
Class tutorial: Day and time to be determined (1 per week through first half of course)
Exam preparation tutorials: Day and time to be determined

Primary texts - online

Descriptive Physical Oceanography, draft of new edition. by William Emery, Lynne Talley and George Pickard. This is a new edition that will be copyrighted and published. Please do not use material for any purposes other than this class. As of September, 2005: Chapters 1 through 8 only. Chapter 15 to be completed shortly.
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).

Relevant Texts

On reserve at library

Regional Oceanography: An Introduction. by Matthias Tomczak and Stuart Godfrey. (Link is to free download of pdf. Text is out of print.)
Invitation to Oceanography by Paul Pinet
Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics by Adrian Gill
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" above for updated chapters.)
Ocean Circulation. Open University Press, Pergamon.
Munn, T., Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change (selected pages in pdf for atmospheric circulation lecture)

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 fall, 2004.
Talley, Robbins, Hendershott. Online notes for SIO 210 from Fall, 2002.
Lynne Talley. Online notes for SIO 210 from Fall, 2000.
An online bibliography (outdated)
Properties of seawater - matlab, fortran, c subroutines

Some previous exams

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

Myrl Hendershott; CCS Bldg 303; 534-3208 mhendershott@ucsd.edu

Last modified: November 20 2005