EEPS1520, Spring 2025 — Notes & Calendar

EEPS1520. Ocean Circulation and Climate

Brown Critical Review Link

Or, Notions for the Motions of the Oceans.
Examines physical characteristics, processes, and dynamics of the global ocean to understand circulation patterns and how they relate to ocean biology, chemistry, and climate change. Assignments address ocean's role in the climate system; ocean observations and models; the origin, distribution, and dynamics of large-scale ocean circulation and water masses; energy and freshwater budgets; and variability of the coupled system on seasonal to centennial timescales e.g. El Niño. Intended for geological and physical sciences undergraduate and graduate students with quantitative skills and an interest in oceans, climate, paleoclimate. Pre-requisite: EEPS 0250, EEPS 0350, PHYS 0720, or MATH 0180. Offered alternate years, previously offered as GEOL1100 and GEOL1520.

You can access the syllabus, class calendar, notes, and reading

Proceedings volumes: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Spring 2021, Spring 2019, Spring 2017, Spring 2015, Spring 2013. Spring 2010. Spring 2008. Spring 2007.

Class Meetings and Notes

Class meets Tuesday and Thursday 1-2:20 in Lincoln Field 117 or Zoom. All assignments due before midnight on day noted. Office Hours are on the calendar below and/or by appointment (just check my availability and request a time). The calendar of lectures with slides and links is below. It is also available as a public subscription iCalendar called "EEPS 1520: Ocean Circulation and Climate" at http://tinyurl.com/lwt3byy. Be sure to click on entries for assignment and reading links.

Web Resources and Texts

  1. Assignment1
  2. Assignment2
  3. Assignment3
  4. Assignment4
  5. Paper writing guidelines, the Science of Scientific Writing
    6. , and Orwell's Politics and the English Language
  6. Peer reviewing guidelines
  7. Response to peer reviews guidelines
  8. Reading assignment guidelines
  9. Matlab guidelines
  10. Math Methods Notes
  11. ECCO guidelines, or up-to-date descriptions in Forget et al. (2015) and Forget et al. (2016)
  12. Words to Pages
    This is an automated article length calculator. All assignments for this class must pass the GRL length calculation of 12 or fewer publication units (1 PU=500 words or 1 figure or 1 table)
  13. Writing Center

Main Textbooks

  1. Wunsch, Modern Observational Physical Oceanography.
  2. Siedler, Griffies, Gould, & Church, Ocean Circulation and Climate: A 21st Century Perspective
  3. Colling, Ocean Circulation, 2nd Ed.. OC for short above.
  4. Marshall & Plumb, Atmosphere, Ocean, and Climate Dynamics.

Secondary Online Textbooks

  1. Vallis, Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics, 2nd Edition.
  2. Vallis, Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics.
  3. Talley, Pickard, Emery, & Swift, Descriptive Physical Oceanography, 6th Ed. DPO for short above.
  4. Emery \& Thomson's Data Analysis Methods in Physical Oceanography, extensive methods book.
  5. Holthuijsen's Waves in Oceanic and Coastal Waters. Everything you wanted to know about waves at the beach.
  6. Chapman & Rizzoli, Wave Motions in the Ocean: Myrl's View A beautiful, short, mathematical treatment of ocean waves.
  7. Tomczak and Godfrey's Regional Oceanography: An Introduction
    Tomczak and Godfrey's nice descriptive textbook.
  8. Tchernia's Descriptive Regional Oceanography.
    An equation-free descriptive text.
  9. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report (AR6, WGI), 2021: Physical Science Basis, and Summary for Policymakers Technical Summary Ocean, Cryosphere, and Sea Level Change
  10. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC), 2019: Technical Summary, and Summary for Policymakers Sea Level Chapter Changing Ocean Chapter

The Competition

  1. Lynne Talley's SIO 210: Intro to Physical Oceanography
    A similar class at Scripps
  2. Lisa Beal's OCE/MPO 603 at RSMAS

Additional Fun Reading

Nonfiction

  1. Cook, The Three Voyages of Captain James Cook Round the World, Vol. 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3.
  2. Maury, 1860: The Physical Geography of the Sea and Its Meteorology
  3. Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle
  4. Darwin, The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs
  5. Sverdrup, New Land: Four Years in the Arctic Region
  6. Nansen, Farthest North, Vol 1 and Vol 2.
  7. M'Clintock, The Voyage of the Fox in the Arctic Seas
  8. Bowditch, The American Practical Navigator
  9. Philander, Our Affair with El Nino
  10. Emanuel, Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes

Fiction

  1. Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
  2. Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
  3. Homer, The Odyssey
  4. London, The Sea Wolf
  5. Melville, Moby Dick
  6. Stevenson, Treasure Island
  7. Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

GFD Lab

  1. Marshall and Plumb (MIT) GFD Lab
  2. National Committee for Fluid Mechanics Films
  3. Ruddick & Hebery Internal Wave Lab Demos
  4. Alistair Fraser's Bad Coriolis, and the Snopes version. Here's how to do it right. (very, very carefully! don't just flush)

Data

  1. The Dataserver for Class Data at Fox-Kemper.com/data
  2. RI Data Discovery Center
  3. ECCOv4r2 LatLon Subdomain Average
  4. ECCOv4r2 LatLon Subdomain Climatology
  5. ECCOv4r2 LatLon Subdomain Monthly State Estimate
  6. ECCOv4r2 Interpolated Average
  7. ECCOv4r2 Interpolated Climatology
  8. ECCOv4r2 Interpolated Monthly State Estimate
  9. Profile data assimilated into ECCOv4r2
  10. 8 Ocean Reanalysis Products, side-by-side
  11. Copernicus Ocean Data Visualization Tools
  12. Global Multi-Archive Current Meter Database
  13. NASA Earth Observations
  14. National Climate Data Center NOMADS Archive
  15. A list of available ocean reanalysis products
  16. Ecological Marine Unit Explorer
  17. CLIVAR & Carbon Hydrographic Data Office
  18. A Discussion Board with lots of links to datasets.
  19. Large list of other marine databases.
  20. Some NASA Data.
  21. National Oceanographic Data Service
  22. Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (USGODAE)
  23. NOAA Physical Sciences Division (PSD)
  24. International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (iCOADS)
  25. Southampton NOCS Flux Datasets (Winds, Heat Fluxes, etc.)
  26. Ocean Watch Live Access Server: easy satellite data access.
  27. PO.DAAC Home: another easy satellite data access.
  28. Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO)
  29. International Research Institute for Climate and Society/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (IRI/LDEO)
  30. NOAA National Operational Model Archive and Distribution System (NOMADS)
  31. EPIC
  32. World Ocean Circulation Experiment
  33. ARGO array data
  34. ARGO data repository
  35. GODAE Live Access data server (use to map ARGO Data)
  36. ARGO data browser (use for individual float measurements)
  37. AVISO SSH Datasets
  38. AVISO Gridded Data Extraction Tool
  39. Global Drifter Program
  40. Ice-Tethered Profiler Data
  41. SCOW Wind Climatology
  42. The NOAA National Operational Model Archive and Distribution System (NOMADS)

ECCO Data Assimilating Models

  1. ECCOv4
  2. ECCO2

Other Models

  1. PCMDI IPCC (CMIP3 and CMIP5) runs
  2. Some simple matlab programs I wrote. See especially inertial oscillator.
  3. Play SimEarth in your Browser!

Software

  1. Matlab
  2. Ocean Data View
  3. Java Ocean Atlas (Software & Data)
  4. LaTeX
  5. ncBrowse, a java netcdf browser
  6. ncview, a graphical netcdf file browser.
  7. A tool for producing pdf output on PCs/Windows

Websites

  1. NOAA Interactive Global Bathymmetry
  2. LDEO Deep-Sea Sample Repository
  3. Cleon Teunissen's Rotation Physics
  4. GISS Temperature Trends
  5. IPCC Home Site
  6. NOAA/NWS Climate Prediction Center
  7. NOAA/PMEL ENSO Page
  8. NOAA Tsunami Page
  9. MBARI Seafood Watch

Brown Specific Guidelines

  1. Student Accessibility Services
  2. Academic & Student Conduct Codes, *Note* Prof. Fox-Kemper regards inappropriate cellphone and laptop use as disruptive behavior.
  3. Academic Code