The role of the Physical Oceanography in to Marine Sciences By: JUAN CARLOS ORTIZ Ph. D. in Marine Science (Physical Oceanography) of University of Puerto Rico Coordinador de posgrados. Departamento de Física. Uninorte [email protected]http://blogs.uninorte.edu.co/jortiz.php BARRANQUILLA, Febrero 11 of 2010 1st Colombian Caribbean Workshop on Physics 2010
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The role of the Physical Oceanography in to Marine Sciencesrole... · Physical Oceanography and Dynamical Oceanography •Oceanography is the general name given to the scientific
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The role of the Physical Oceanography in to Marine
Sciences
By:
JUAN CARLOS ORTIZ Ph. D. in Marine Science (Physical Oceanography) of
University of Puerto Rico
Coordinador de posgrados. Departamento de Física. Uninorte
• Oceanography is the general name givento the scientific study of the oceans.
• It is historically divided in terms of thebasic sciences into physical, biological,chemical, and geological oceanography.
• Physical oceanography is historicallyapproached both descriptively anddynamically.
• The goal of descriptive physicaloceanography is to obtain a clear andsystematic description of the oceans,sufficiently quantitative to permit us topredict some aspects of their behavior inthe future with some certainty.
• The dynamical oceanography is to usephysical laws to obtain mathematicalrelations between the forces acting on theoceans.
Why Study Ocean Physics ?
• The oceans provide a vitally important avenue of transportation. They form a sink into which industrial and human waste is dumped.
• The large heat capacity of the oceans exerts a significant and in some cases a controlling effect on the earth’s climate, while the continuous movement of the currents and waves along the coast must be taken into account when piers, breakwaters and other structures are built.
History
• Physical oceanography has gone through several historical phases. Presumably sailors have always been concerned with ocean currents as they affect their ships’ courses and changes in ocean temperature or surface condition.
• The first major expedition designed expressly to study all the scientific aspects of the oceans was that of the British H.M.S. Challenger which circumnavigated the globe from 1872 to 1876
• Many early mathematicians also used their skills to study the ocean. Sir Isaac Newton didn’t directly work on problems of the ocean but his principle of universal gravitation was an essential building block in understanding the tides.
• Both LaPlace and LeGendre put a lot of work into a formal solution of the tides; LaPlace’s equation is a fundamental element in a description of the tides.
• Working with whaling Captain Folger, Benjamin Franklin published a map showing the current known as the Gulf Stream.
• In this published chart, Franklin depicted the Gulf Stream and advised ship captains to sail at certain latitudes when going east and others when going west.
• Before the Second World War a number of oceanographic institutions were founded in various parts of the world.
• In the US two very notable institutions were created. In California, what was earlier the Scripps Institution for Biological Research became in 1925 the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), while in Massachusetts the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) located in Woods Hole spun off the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in January of 1930.
•Both organizations became and continue to be the leading American institutions for the study of the ocean. Woods Hole Research Center
• At SIO, Harald Sverdrup was hired as a new director in 1936, bringing from the Bergen school an emphasis on physical oceanography.
• Sverdrup had earlier been involved with an international effort to sail a submarine under the North Polar ice cap. During a test it was discovered that the submarine, named the Nautilus, had lost a diving rudder and would not be able to cruise beneath the ice.
• Out west, at SIO, Harald Sverdrup and his student Walter Munk were studying the dynamics of wind-driven currents.
• At WHOI, Henry Stommel was also involved in these studies. Stommel’s model and its explanation of the westward intensification that closed the major ocean gyres at the western end.
• Vagn Ekman was a Swedish oceanographer and was the pioneer in the understanding of the transport of the wind. It was observed during FRAM expedition when small iceberg don’t move in the same wind direction. Ekman Dead on 1954)