Questions tagged [oceanography]
The oceanography tag has no usage guidance.
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Geocentrism and annual tide variation
I have read that in the before common era, Seleucus of Seleucia have studied tides and probably used annual variation as an evidence of heliocentric. However, tides are known to be affected by ...
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How can tides even of miniscule magnitude occur in inland lakes?
Ocean water is flexible enough to allow water from each side of low tide to flow to the sides of high tide.
So for a high tide, there must be a low tide somewhere else from where water is drawn out. ...
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Does the minimum connection time of ocean surface currents depend on the patch scale?
The Nature paper "The timescales of global surface-ocean connectivity" attempts to model "minimum connectivity times (Min-T), or distances based on the fastest times that particles can ...
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Tides in lakes attached to the ocean
This is research for a book I am writing and I strongly suspect the answer is no, however I can not quite get Google to spit out a direct answer. :-)
If you have a lake, attached directly to the ocean ...
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How does the Coriolis effect explain Ekman transport?
Before answering the question, keep in mind that I am a second year Biology student, with no experience in studying Physics and a very basic understanding of Mathematics. Thus, I would prefer a ...
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Is there a formula for finding pressure as a function of depth in the ocean?
It is well known that one can find the pressure in a static fluid as a function of height using the well-known formula for hydrostatic equilibrium
$$\frac{\mathrm{d}P}{\mathrm{d}z}=-\rho g, \tag 1$$
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Timescale for unstable stratification to resolve itself
The ocean is typically vertically stratified, that is the deeper you go the higher the density should be. This can be because of increased salinity or decreased temperature.
If that is not the case ...
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How does nitrogen narcosis occur?
I'm confused as to how the partial pressure of nitrogen inhaled from an air tank while scuba diving increases as you descend deeper. Obviously the pressure of the water above you increases the deeper ...
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How does the partial pressure of oxygen relate to its concentration in water?
I've read that the partial pressure of oxygen in water will be the same as the partial pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere, but that the saturation of oxygen in water is dependent on factors like ...
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How can I determine the total energy and power provided by an ocean wave when it reaches shore?
When an ocean wave travels to the shoreline and breaks, how much energy is released? I did some research on finding out a formula to calculate how much energy is stored and then released by ocean ...
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How long do geostrophic currents last?
My professor posed this question, without any relevant material. I suppose the currents last until the density gradient is neutralized, but I can't find any literature nor articles on this, regarding ...
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Would gas inside of non-compressible material be affected by pressure in the deep ocean? [duplicate]
I was thinking about the pressure of the deep ocean and was curious if gasses inside of a non-compressible container would experience the extreme pressures associated with great depth. I'm sort of ...
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How many waves are in the ocean? [closed]
XKCD #2741 mentions in the title text
It's cool how, when there's a number lots of people are curious about, but which isn't easy to measure, some random guess will get cited everywhere and become ...
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How to calculate actual ocean water height, taking into account both tides and weather?
Tide tables are useful starting points for tides-- whcih are arguably the dominant first-order effect in water depth changes. However, a not-to-distant second-order effect is the weather. Wind will ...
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Ideal Turbulence
I'm studying the turbulence in ocean and i started to study a mathematic introduction of turbulence.
We define
$ R_{ij}(\underline{x},\underline{r},t) := \overline{u_i(\underline{x},t)u_j(\underline{x}...
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What is the differences between Airy irregular wave model and Statistical waves models of Tessendorf?
I've read the article of Tessendorf which implements the ocean based on a statistical waves models, I have the impression that this is the method used globally in video games and real time application....
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Tip of the Iceberg [closed]
Is it possible to approximate the volume of an entire iceberg if one happens to know the volume of the visible tip? (Assume the water is perfectly still.) If so, how may that be done?
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Ocean waves breaking slowly at the shore during periods of turbulence
During storms, I have often watched ocean waves breaking at the shore as if they were in slow motion. I've wondered if the slow curling of the waves during these times was somehow due to their ...
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How to simulate salinity gradient in experiment?
I feel like the question is probably fairly fundamental. I have to recreate oceanic turbulence in terms of salinity and temperature gradients. Temperature is easy - heater. What should I do with the ...
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Physical Interpretation of the Equation of Motion
Ocean dynamics can often be described by the equation of motion
$$\frac{D\vec{u}}{Dt}=-\nabla\Phi-\frac{1}{\rho}\nabla p-\vec{f}\times\vec{u}.$$
I am searching for a physical meaning of this equation, ...
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Calculating the Mass of Earth's Atmosphere
I am trying to solve the problem below:
Calculate the mass of the Earth's atmosphere given a mean pressure at the surface of $1.013\times 10^5$ Pa and $g=9.81$ m/s/s.
I have been provided a hint ...
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What is the physical idea behind the mathematical definition of the dimensionless "surf similarity parameter"?
My question refers to a parameter called "iribarren number", whose value corresponds qualitatively to the type of breaking of water waves (spilling, plunging, collapsing and surging) on a uniformly ...
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Bottom orbital velocity during a typical typhoon
What is the wave orbital velocity generated during a typhoon? I cannot find direct measurements, so hoping to find a way to calculate this. In other words:
How do I get from wind speeds of 12 on the ...
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Ocean warming by induced electric current for wandering magnetic poles?
In a post on the co-rotation of Earth and its magnetic field (Does the geomagnetic field rotate?), John Rennie raised the point that, if Earth's magnetic field were rotating about its dipole axis, it ...
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Effect of Force(ex:Ship movement) on objects(nodes) deployed in the sea or ocean
I am looking for a mathematical model describing the motion of nodes deployed in sea due to movement of ship(a Force) or due to water current. I came across the drag equation which is used to ...
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How much do sea levels rise due to thermal expansion?
I was reading an article by the Smithsonian Institute about the rising sea levels. In it, they mention how warmer water expands more, thus it helps to raise the average sea level. This makes perfect ...
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Is Sentinel able to obtain wave spectrum by interferometric Data?
I have recently read many articles on recovering wave spectrum from the AT-INSAR image spectrum (through interferometric images). However, it is not clear to me whether Sentinel is a viable option, ...
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Underwater acoustics: particle motion
The properties of an acoustic wave field depend on the mechanical properties of the supporting medium, including the density, and the bulk modulus. With increasing density, the propagation speed of ...
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How does a complex-valued sound speed related to the bulk modulus and density definition?
In ocean acoustics the speed of sound $c$ can often include an imaginary component that accounts for attenuation due to the nature of the medium. That is, $c = c_r - ic_i$ with $c_r$ the regular sound ...
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Visually comparing variances
I have a dataset containing 8 categories, I now want to visually compare the variance between the categories. The most common approach would be to use box plots or violin plots but I would like to ...
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Alternative forms of metacentric height based stability condition
For a floating body is stable condition Archimedes principle of buoyancy will be obeyed. where $M_{b}$ and $M_{w}$ are mass of the total body and mass of the emerged water.
$$M_{b}=M_{w}$$
Tilting it ...
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How do you calculate the rate of ascent for frozen seawater in seawater?
Assuming 1m3 sphere of seawater were flash frozen at a depth of 1km, how rapidly would it start ascending to the surface given the buoyancy? Assuming we could ignore bonds between the surface of ...
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High pressures under ocean surface
I read a book about deep water exploring in mariana's trench. They of course talked a lot about pressure, and so this question came to my mind:
If you're, say, 2km down in the Mariana's Trench there ...
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Ocean wave periodicity
Sitting at the beach, I observe waves crashing onto the shore with some periodicity (although not quite mono-periodic). Since wind is the source of ocean waves (not considering tides), how can we ...
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Can bubbles lower water pressure?
After watching a TV show I saw that bubbles originating from underwater can lower the impact damage when something hit it at velocity.
I was wondering if another implementation of this would work.
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What happens when one sticks their foot out of a diving bell at crush depth?
I've been reading a lot about lost World War II submarines, and in the book I'm reading, they discuss the use of a diving bell to go down 5 miles to the ocean floor. I have a couple questions about ...
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Effect of aeration on Celerity
Suppose a ocean wave encountered a section of ocean which had a higher level of aeration from gas such as methane escaping from the seafloor.
Due to the aerated sections apparent lower density would ...
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The physics/math behind rogue waves [closed]
I'm a little confused as to why rogue waves are so unpredictable and large. Are they just the chance combinations of many waves or is there a physical and mathematical reasoning as to how they exist? ...
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How does melting ice change the mass of the ocean?
In the paper, Ocean Bottom Deformation Due To Present-Day Mass Redistribution and Its Impact on Sea Level Observations, the authors state that:
Due to changes in the land ice mass balance and land ...
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What happens to the energy in an ocean wave after it breaks on a reef or the shore?
I understand that the conservation of energy essentially says that "energy can neither be destroyed or created but that it is transferred from one form to another." Given that, on the ocean, wind ...
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Why and how are wave sets (groups) created?
At a coasts wave normally arrive in groups (sets) and we wondered why this is the case. Some internet research did reveal some clues but no convincing answer.
I want to know why waves gather in ...
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Which way will the Sphere rotate? [closed]
Let's say we have a sphere, with an "inner boarder" splitting it into 4 equal parts. We extract the air from the 3/4 parts (leaving them completely empty) and we fill just 1/4 part with air. We then ...
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Physics and depth control of a small spherical submarine
Recently, me and my dad were discussing the theoretical design of a small homemade submarine. Lets assume that it is a hollow acrylic sphere with a radius of around 25cm. The radius would likely need ...
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Swell Spectral Transform
For understanding the quality of surf in general, I find that directional spectral plots, like this also below, are the best way for me to get a quick mental picture. I want to make a kind of video of ...
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Convert units of Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) for sea surface temperature data
I have a dataset of daily averaged sea surface temperatures for an entire year. I wish to use an empirical orthogonal function to find the dominant patterns within the data.
Consider that my ...
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Righting moment for object submerged in water
I am looking to determine the lateral angle at which an underwater camera system will no longer right itself. When on the ocean floor it is $-24.30~\text{kg}$ buoyant with the difference between its ...
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Why does sound absorption in oceans depend on the pH?
I was reading "The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History", by Elizabeth Kolbert, and there she comments that high level of $CO_{2}$ in the atmosphere lowers the pH of oceans (which makes sense) and, ...
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Why do some location on Earth have only one tidal maximum per day instead of two?
Most places in the ocean have two high tides and two low tides per "day" (~25 hours). But I remember reading that some locations only have one of each per day.
This answer has some great explanations ...
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D2O distribution in water [duplicate]
I just learned that about 1/1000 of hydrogen is deuterium. Does that mean 1/1000 of water is D2O, which is heavier and sinks to the bottom in a glass of water? And consequently is there a layer of D2O ...
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Great Pacific Garbage Patch Equilibrium Points
I originally posted this question on earth science stack, but the question wasn't getting many views.
I was watching the science channel yesterday and the program mentioned the Great Pacific Garbage ...
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