ATOC 5051, Fall 2008 — Notes & Calendar

ATOC 5051: Introduction to Physical Oceanography

Or, Notions for the Motions of the Oceans. This is a core course for graduate students covering the basic tools needed for oceanography. Observational, dynamical, numerical, and descriptive methods are discussed and used to get a sense of the historical and contemporary understanding of the motions of the oceans.

You can access the syllabus, proceedings, class notes, and class files.

Given the types of waves we have studied, you can either:

1. Study a wavelike process in the ECCO dataset. For example, use the LAS server to make Hovmuller diagrams (xt surfaces) of different variables. Find a wave, check its dispersion relation.
2. Write a review paper of related observational papers on waves.
3. Extend the analysis we did in class theoretically, by pure analysis or writing/using a model for a wave process.

There will be more about this assignment in class, and this paper is probably more flexible than many.