Updated:

6 Sep: Course Introduction

Notes Intro

Buoyancy-driven Circulation

8, 12, and 13 Sep: What Drives Estuaries?

• Estuarine flow
• mixing and slumping
• Knudsen relation
• freshet versus winter
• Mass and Volume Transports

NotesEstuaries (Ex01, Due 20 Sep, is in the reading)

15, 19, 20 Sep: Temperature, Salinity, and Pressure Gradients?

• What is temperature and potential temperature?
• What is salinity?
• What are their effects on density?
• Light and Sound in the ocean
• What is pressure?
• What is hydrostatic pressure?
• Pressure gradients

NotesPressureForce (Ex02 due 27 Sep)

22, 26, 27 Sep: Salt and Heat Fluxes; Mixing

Fri 29 Sep CRUISE!

• half the class; other half get day off…

• How do heat and salt balances work?
• What does the heat budget tell us about the circulation of the oceans?
• What is a diffusive flux and how do we quantify them?
• What is the role of turbulence in mixing the ocean?

NotesHeatBudget (Ex03, due 6 Oct)

3, 6 Oct: Distribution of tracers in the ocean; T/S Diagrams

4 Oct: CRUISE

• Vertical and horizontal distributions of temperature
• Surface Mixed Layers
• Salinity distributions
• Other tracers

NotesDistributionOceanProps (Ex04, due 13 Oct)

10, 11, 13 Oct: Water Masses and the Global Thermohaline Circulation

• Atlantic water masses
• Pacific water masses
• What is the THC?
• How strong is the THC
• What drives the THC

NotesThc (Ex05, due 20 Oct)

17, 18, 20 Oct: Surface Waves

• Basic wave parameters
• What are they and what do they do?
• How does the wind geenrate?
• Advanced wave parameters
• Dispersion, spreading, refraction and shoaling.

NotesSurfaceWaves (Ex06, due 31 Oct)

24 Oct: QUIZ 1 (Estuaries to Water Masses and the Global THC)

25, 27, 31 Oct: Ocean Tides

• Driving forces
• Propagation in Juan de Fuca
• Internal Tides

NotesTides (Exercise, in class activity)

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Wind-driven circulation

1 Nov: Wind Driven Circulations Intro

• How does wind make water move?
• What are the general characteristics of wind driven flows on a rotating planet?

NotesWindDrivenOverview1

3, 7, 8 Nov: Coriolis force and Ekman Balance

• review of angular momentum
• Coriolis force as a manifestation.
• the balance of forces in the turbulent surface layer

NotesCoriolis (Ex07 due 17 Nov)

10, 17, 21 Nov: Geostrophic Balance and Coastal Circulation:

• Geostrophic Balance
• “Thermal Wind” (geostrophic balance w/ baroclinic pressure gradients)
• Coastal currents

NotesGeo10 (Ex08 due 24 Nov)

22, 24, 28 Nov: Gyre Circulations and Sverdrup Balance

• General shape
• Western intensification
• Examples in Atlantic and Pacific

NotesGyreCirculation (Ex09 due 29 Nov)

29 Dec (Review:) Equatorial Currents and Southern Ocean

• Equatorial currents
• “Long” waves (Rossby and Kelvin Waves)
• El Nino
• Southern Ocean….

NotesOther2 (Exercise, but not graded)

1 Dec: QUIZ 2 (Mostly Tides to Gyres)