Dynamical Oceanography

Catalog description

Credits 3. 3 Lecture Hours. COURSE OVERVIEW. This course helps students to master the most important concepts in modern geophysical fluid dynamics and to apply these concepts to the ocean. It emphasizes mathematical problem solving, enabling you to derive, simplify and solve the equations that describe ocean currents. RELEVANCE AND APPLICATION. This course provides the mathematical and analytical toolkit necessary for advanced research in climate science and oceanography. The frameworks you will learn in this class form the basis of virtually every global ocean and climate model. Mastery of the material in this course equips you to interpret and predict the response of the ocean to changes in wind and atmospheric temperature. TOPICS AND THEMES. We will establish the governing laws for the ocean in the form of conservation of mass, momentum and tracers by the ocean. We will examine major force balances like geostrophy, Ekman transport and thermal wind. You will learn some of the common ways to simplify the momentum equation including the Boussinesq approximation, geostrophic adjustment, the shallow water equations and quasi-geostrophy. We will discuss how the simplified momentum equations lead to planetary waves like Kelvin and Rossby waves and how potential vorticity conservation can be used to predict the ocean’s gyres and western boundary currents. We will explore theoretical frameworks for understanding turbulence and mixing in the ocean. Finally, you will learn how baroclinic instability energizes ocean eddies. Prerequisites: OCNG 608 or ATMO 435 ; MATH 601 .