Questions tagged [oceanography]
Oceanography is the branch of Earth science that studies the ocean. It is also known as oceanology.
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Why does vertical diffusivity increase with depth in the ocean?
In Talley et al.'s Descriptive Physical Oceanography, figure S7.4, it seems that vertical Eddy diffusivity increases with depth between 0 and 30 degrees latitude. Why is this? I thought that ...
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Have the oceans dissolved water vapour?
The oceans have dissolved gases as N2 or O2.
Henry's law establishes there is an equilibrium between the atmospheric concentration of a gas and its concentration in the ocean.
The atmosphere has H2O(...
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Why are there waves in seas towards shore - even in night?
Waves are mostly caused by Friction of wind on surface of water.
Wind blows from sea to land in day and land to sea in night due to pressure and temperature difference.
So it is intuitive why there ...
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Most corrosive seawater areas in world
I am looking for any studies or maps detailing the average salinity and temperature for areas of the Earth's oceans. As an extra if anyone has data or maps on areas with large amounts of in-trained ...
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Is Hudson Bay part of the Arctic or the Atlantic Ocean?
Years ago I learned that the Columbia ice field was North America's triple divide point: water flowing from this ice field could drain into the Artic, the Pacific, and the Atlantic Ocean. Something I ...
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Increase Evaporation from oceans
I would like to ask you about evaporation from sea water. Can you increase evaporation by spraying seawater to the air? Is there any difference compared to freshwater spraying (aerosol particles)?
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Is the ocean a carbon sink when considering only the biospheric component?
Most people knows that the ocean overall is a carbon sink, but a big part of the sink is due to chemical equilibrium (via dissolution) with the atmosphere (for ref: https://link.springer.com/article/...
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How to solve libnetcdf.so.12: cannot open shared object file in pyferret?
My pyferret was working perfectly until I had installed netCDF4 and now it is throwing up this error
...
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1answer
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How do I start with Modular Ocean Model version 6 i.e. MOM6 on my ubuntu linux machine?
I am learning ocean modelling and have started with MOM6. I needed guidance on where to start from and how to run the model on my local machine (Ubuntu) to perform various tasks such as regridding or ...
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History of the Arctic Ocean
Much of the Arctic Ocean is fairly shallow compared to other oceans. There must have been times in the past during severe ice ages that a lot of what is now the ocean bed was above sea level. When was ...
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1answer
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Result of floating-iron-balls in the mid-pacific?
I had an idea to make green islands from mid-pacific plastic: Release a million tons of floating iron balls there, which will stay in the same regions as the plastic and hopefully cause a veritable ...
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On La Vagabonde what Citizen Science is Possible? [closed]
The Catamaran La Vagabonde is a high tech vessel that's designed to be as carbon neutral as possible.
Subject to the constraints of space, time and safety, what citizen science projects would be ...
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How can methylmercury in the ocean be reabsorbed into the atmosphere?
The Sacramento Bee news article Toxic fog may be poisoning some of California’s mountain lions, study says says
Algae in the ocean convert mercury to methylmercury, its most toxic form, which can ...
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Why does the ocean seem much cleaner than the bay I live near
I live in Melbourne near a bay, and it always seems really dirty, whenever I go out to the open ocean the water always seems much cleaner. Is there a reason for this, does the bay trap pollution or do ...
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1answer
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Creating a general log sheet for CTD and ADCP for fieldwork
It is close to the deadline for conducting research on a research vessel for the Irish Sea (one month left). I'm currently a student and would like some descriptive observational data/variables needed ...
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1answer
61 views
Understanding timescales within the day period
I stumbled across a timescale which I am unsure of. What does it mean by intra-daily scale variability? I would also like to know if intra-tidal scale variability is of any use for capturing daily ...
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Why is reverse osmosis desalination the dominant method used and not heat-based methods? Also why is brine being dumped back into the ocean? [closed]
So I was recently watching this video regarding desalination efforts around the world and the viability of desalination as a means to provide humans with freshwater. I had a few questions:
1 - They ...
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1answer
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What's really happening with “stormquakes”?
The PBS Newshour article Scientists discover big storms can create ‘stormquakes’ says:
A stormquake is more an oddity than something that can hurt you, because no one is standing on the sea floor ...
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Why was the temperature change greater in higher latitudes than in lower latitudes during the Paleocene/Eocene thermal maximum?
In the "Plankton cooled a greenhouse", which is the article written by Birger Schmitz, it is stated that the subtropical regions became warmer during the PETM(Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum) but the ...
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How does nature dilute Ocean and Seas so that we can swim in them?
I have a question about the seas and ocean we swim in. How does the Ocean get rid off all the natural pollutants (for example dead animal debris) and man-made pollutants (human waste, garbage, etc)? I ...
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1answer
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The halocline and sonar
I studied oceanography many years ago at university and recall a lecturer claiming that submarines in the second world war could pass undetected through the entrance to the Mediterranean. ...
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1answer
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Can a sonar used to graph the ocean floors detect through polluted and highly populated waters?
So graphing the ocean floors using sonar is not anything new. But what are the limits to sonar?
Would it be possible for a regular sonar device to emit sounds that are strong enough to penetrate ...
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Cooling effect from the oceans in global warming
The ocean soaks up about 90 percent of the heat of climate change, because of ocean heating. When using the formula of Svante Arrhenius to calculate forcing due to atmospheric $CO_2$
$\Delta F=\alpha\...
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1answer
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Net fluxes of carbon caused by humans
The current and future amount of carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere and the hydrosphere is what currently concerns and occupies many people.
I am looking for a big picture of ...
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1answer
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Relationship Between Ratio of Atmospheric Gases and Ocean Gases
A version of this question was posted in Chemistry SE and Worldbuilding SE but I've been told it wasn't appropriate to either SE. I was told to give this SE a chance. If you think it doesn't belong on ...
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Why does the salt in the oceans not sink to the bottom?
This is something that just occurred to me. If heavier elements sink, then how can the entire ocean be salty? Shouldn't the 'salt', because of its density, all sink to the bottom of the ocean? In ...
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Temperature of the earth [closed]
What are the main factors that contribute to the temperature fluctuations/cycles of a location? Is the earth's temperature cycle dictated mainly by the temperature cycle of the ocean? How does the ...
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1answer
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Regional and Relative Sea level
I am a little confused by the terms "regional" and "relative" in the sea level change context.
Do the two words have the same meaning? Does the "regional MSL trend" in https://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/...
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2answers
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Why doesn't sea level show seasonality?
North-hemisphere ice-shelf melts on summer and grows on winter. I would expect appreciable changes on sea-level between seasons, but sea-level looks equal on winter than on summer.
Why doesn't sea ...
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1answer
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Beta plane approximation: variation of Coriolis parameter
The Beta plane approximation put me in confusion.
Beta plane approximation explain me how the Coriolis parameter changes with latitude.
Beta parameter changes with the cos(latitude) but this is ...
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1answer
107 views
What would happen if I installed distributed water fountains in all of the ocean's dead zones? [closed]
As every thalassologist knows, the ocean is filled with great streches of desert with no marine photosynthetic life. What would happen if, for each of these oceanic deserts, I densely filled them with ...
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1answer
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What is the significance of amphidromic points related to tides?
On reading about tide formation and the role of moon's gravitational force, I came across the term amphidromic point. Could someone please elaborate this concept?
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Molten salt seas on the future Earth
As the sun gets brighter, the oceans are expected to evaporate by the next billion years or so (the vapor slowly gets stripped off into space). The salt, which is less dense than most rocks, will be ...
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Quickly breeding oysters to combat oceanic pollution?
I've been doing some wikipedia binging and it's come to my realization that it may be in the Earth's best interest to raise the world oyster population as quickly as possible. The basis for this is ...
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1answer
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What is the weather data covering the range of 359 to 360 degree
I downloaded a grib file of oceanography (Mean Wave Period) from ERA-Interim and the longitude values give the value at the points is 0,1, 2, 3....357, 358, 359
If I have geographical coordinates ...
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2answers
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Could the Grand Canyon be flooded by the ocean if it got deep enough?
The Colorado River has been carving the Grand Canyon for a few million years now, such that the canyon floor is around 6000 feet lower in elevation than the surrounding area, at about 2400 feet above ...
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Finding vessel and wave's angle of attack [closed]
I am finding angle between ship's heading and component in wave (wave's angle of attack), not sure if ES is a right place to ask this type of question.
Should it be the difference between mean wave ...
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1answer
157 views
Understood cause of sea level rise between 1850 and 1950
This question is based on the following graph from a 2018 report by J. Curry.
(I haven't found any peer-review of the report itself so I can't vouch for the validity of its claims, but that's not the ...
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2answers
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Sea cave vs Sea arch
How do you distinguish sea cave from sea arch?
If I want to classify a crack of sea cliff as sea cave, has it to have a dead end? Would you call a geological formation as a sea cave even a kayak can ...
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What could cause a turn from global warming to global cooling?
Except a hypothesized orbital forcing! Ice cores shows that there are several irregular sharp temperature peaks in between of the big 100,000 years glaciations. What could cause those peaks?
Almost ...
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Coral Reef and Volcanic Islands
I have two questions regarding coral reef and volcanic islands.
When a new volcanic island is formed, how much time generaly passes before a coral reef starts to form around the island?
Another ...
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0answers
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Using salinity to predict rainfall
Recently, a new method has been proposed by Ray Schmitt (WHOI) and collaborators to use salinity patterns in the ocean to predict weather events (more specifically, rainfall) at scales from weeks to ...
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1answer
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How much energy would be required to actively reduce the temperature of the oceans of Earth by 1℃?
Is there a way to calculate the energy required to reduce the heat of oceans?
Am I wrong in thinking it is not as simple as reversing the calculation for specific heat of sea water?
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Does long-term exposure to ocean water change the chemical structure of plastic into ocean plastic?
I've just been thinking a fair deal about ocean plastic and the ocean clean-up project. Is there something in saline water that changes the chemical composition of most plastics to make them pretty ...
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1answer
60 views
What are the hottest temperatures ocean life can survive at [closed]
What are the hottest average annual temperature for life in the ocean to withstand? Particularly algae
This could include life from all points in earth history.
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1answer
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Why are the seas difficult to navigate at the “southern edge” of land?
The question was inspired by an answer to this question on History SE, which referred to the "at times enormous waves" at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and the even more "treacherous" passage ...
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Why an inertial gyro has a frequency and a geostrophic gyro does not?
Inertial flow is given by the balance between Coriolis and centrifugal forces. A geostrophic flow is given by a balance between Coriolis and the gradients of pressure. The frequency of the inertial ...
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Why do Mediterranean main currents surrounding landmasses turn counter-clockwise?
At North Hemisphere, main superficial currents turn clock-wise, because of Coriolis Effect.
I would expect on Mediterranean Sea to have currents turning in the same sense, but, surrounding landmasses,...
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transition elastic deformation to flow
Let's assume a small (and smooth) vertical deformation of the seabed. If done quickly, I can consider it a vertical force generating an acoustic wave in the water, where every particle of water ...
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What goes into a tide power prediction for every fifteen minutes over the next twenty five years?
I was watching a segment about tidal power generation on a PBS NewsHour broadcast. I've set the time code at about 11:45 to capture a little background. This bit ...
