To understand the interrelationships among these different components, we must have some understanding of each of them. The focus of this course is on the physical processes within the hydrosphere, with emphasis on the world's oceans. The scales of these processes range through spatial scales from centimeters to global and time scales from seconds to centuries. Paleoceanographic processes extend the temporal scales to millenia and longer. An understanding of the concepts of physical oceanography is often necessary to fully appreciate and understand processes in the other oceanographic disciplines, marine biology, chemical oceanography, and marine geology.
Physical oceanography is important in many different ways.
Much of the world's human population lives near the coast where the effects of marine weather, hurricanes, waves, tides, and coastal currents are manifested. Regional current systems, such as the Gulf Stream, are important components of the global ocean circulation. El Nino is an example of a larger-scale phenomenon whose equatorial origin belies its global impacts on the atmosphere and ocean. Finally, the oceans play an important role in the planetary climate system and the recent interest in climate change. This course is designed to introduce students to the important physical processes in the oceans in such a way that they will understand both the conceptual physical principles and at the larger scale how these fit into the earth as a system.