Instructor:

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

TF:

Chris Horvat, horvat@fas.harvard.edu. Tel, office, office Hours: please see FAS course web page.

Day, time:

Tuesday, Thursday, 1:00-2:30.

Location:

University Museum, 24 Oxford St, first floor, room 105 Daly Seminar Room

Field Trip!

To Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, March 4, 2016. Departing early morning, returning around 6pm.

Matlab Intro Session:

Matlab will be used occasionally for HW assignments and class demonstrations. If you have not been exposed to Matlab or would like a refresher, we recommend that you consider attending the Matlab boot camp which involves 3-4 lectures and takes place during the beginning of the term. If interested, you need to register in advance at https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/1858 and the number of students may be limited.

Section:

time and location: see FAS course web page.

Source materials:

are available here. In order to access notes and other course materials from outside the Harvard campus or from the Harvard wireless network, you’ll need to use the VPN software which can be downloaded from the FAS software download site.

Important past events…:

 

• Field trips to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016.
• EPS 131 Oscar events: 2005: surface waves; 2008: internal waves; 2010: great Pacific garbage patch; 2012: thermohaline circulation; 2014: surface waves; 2016: brine rejection;
• zeta vs xi (ζ vs ξ) competition: 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016.

Contents

(Obligatory & fun) field trip to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI): date TBA, 2016. We’ll be leaving Cambridge very early in the morning, back in the late afternoon. Our Host will be Dr. Bob Pickart; in previous trips we visited the R/V Atlantis, R/V Knorr, the submersible Alvin, and toured the labs of WHOI; photos;

1 Textbooks

Main ones, although it wont be followed very closely:

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

Also useful: see additional readings below.

2 Outline

Observations and understanding of ocean physics, from local beach waves to the effects of the oceans on global climate. Topics covered include wave motions such as ocean surface waves, internal waves, tsunamis and tides; currents, including the wind driven circulation, and the Gulf stream; coastal upwelling and fisheries; temperature, salinity, the overturning thermohaline circulation and its effect on global climate stability and variability; the basic fluid dynamics equations will be gradually introduced; El Nio evens in the equatorial Pacific Ocean; the oceans and global warming; 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: Applied Mathematics 21a,b; Physical Sciences 12a,b, Physics 15a,b,c or Applied Physics 50a,b; or equivalents/ permission of instructor.

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

3 Syllabus

Detailed lecture notes, directory with all source materials for the lectures.

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 moving icebergs and feeding the fish
   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. Abrupt climate change
    downloads;
11. Some fluid dynamics fundamentals
    downloads;
12. Waves and oscillations II: deep ocean surface waves and waves affected by the Coriolis force
    downloads;
13. Misc Advanced topics (time permitting);

4 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

5 Requirements

Homework will be assigned every 9-10 days throughout the course. The best 90% of the homework assignments 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 (30%), see details here for a list of possible subjects. The final exam will be a take home (30%).

Collaboration policy: Discussion and the exchange of ideas are essential to doing academic work, and we strongly encourage you to discuss and work on homework problems with other students (and with the teaching staff, of course). However, after discussions with peers, make sure that you can work through the problem 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. In addition, you must cite any books, articles, websites, lectures, etc that have helped you with your work using appropriate citation practices.

Please note: Course materials are the property of the instructional staff, Harvard University, 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.

6 Links

• Coriolis force movies and resources: here, here, and here.
• 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.