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Books > Earth & environment > Earth sciences > The hydrosphere > Oceanography (seas)
Klaus-Peter Schwarz, lAG President The University of Calgary The Scientific Assembly of the International Association of Geodesy (lAG) was held from September 3 to 9, 1997 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in conjunction with the 18th Brazilean Congress of Carthography. This was the first time that one ofthe major lAG meetings took place in Brazil. It provided an opportunity to showcase the progress of geodetic work in South America through campaigns such as SIRGAS. It also provided an opportunity for a large group of international experts to present the state of the art in ge- odesy and geodynamis and to interact with their hosts on possibilities of future coopera- tion. For the lAG, it continued a trend, started in Beijing four years ago, to hold major geodetic meetings outside of Europe and North America. The International Geoid School which was held in Sao Paulo following this meeting showed another facet of this grow- ing internationalization ofIAG activities and services. The scientific program of the meeting consisted of three symposia and two special ses- sions, namely Symposium 1 : Advances in Positioning and Reference Frames Symposium 2: Gravity and Geoid Symposium 3: Geodynamics Special Session 1: lAG Services Special Session 2: Geodesy in Antartica. Papers presented at the first symposium are published in volume 1 of these proceedings, while papers of symposia 2 and 3 as well as special session 2 are contained in volume 2. Papers presented at special session 1 will be published separately.
This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the theory of
sound propagation in the ocean. The text treats both ray and wave
propagation and pays considerable attention to stochastic problems
such as the scattering of sound at rough surfaces and random
inhomogeneities. An introductory chapter that discusses the basic
experimental data complements the following theoretical chapters.
This study analyzes carbon-cycle conditions controlling the state of the Arctic ecosystem and their seasonal variations. Territory covered includes the Barents, White, Kara, Laptev, East-Siberian and Chukchi Seas, considering inter-correlations between sources of organic carbon, their fluxes, recycling and burial in bottom sediments. All biological communities (phythoplankton, macrophythobenthos, microphythobentos, bacterioplankton, zooplankton and zoobenthos) are taken into account regarding their participation in the carbon cycle.
The Antarctic represents the last of the world's still unexplored continents. Since 1985, Italy has sent 10 expeditions to this region, three of those have been exclusively devoted to research on the marine ecology of the Ross Sea region. This volume presents a global picture of this research. It includes contributions on water mass characteristics, particulate organic matter and nutrient utilization, and physiological aspects of primary production. Further topics are zooplankton, krill and top predator interactions in relation to physical and biological parameters, ecological features of coastal fish communities and the spatio-temporal variability of benthic biocenoses.
The authors of this timely reference provide an updated and global view on ocean wave energy conversion and they do so for wave energy developers as well as for students and professors. The book is orientated to the practical solutions that this new industry has found so far and the problems that any device needs to face. It describes the actual principles applied to machines that convert wave power to electricity and examines state-of-the-art modern systems.
This book fills a gap in knowledge of breaking waves and their influence on the generation of marine fluxes from ocean surfaces. Based on published data as well as on the author's experience, the text explores in detail the relationship chain of breaking waves, whitecaps coverage, rate of wave energy dissipation, amount of aerosol fluxes rising from a given sea basin, and possible seasonal variations.
This book is a research monograph on high-Frequency Seafloor Acoustics. It is the first book in a new series sponsored by the Office of Naval Research on the latest research in underwater acoustics. It provides a critical evaluation of the data and models pertaining to high-frequency acoustic interaction with the seafloor, which will be of interest to researchers in underwater acoustics and to developers of sonars. Models and data are presented so as to be readily usable, backed up by extensive explanation. Much of the data is new, and the discussion in on two levels: concise descriptions in the main text backed up by extensive technical appendices.
This book studies the history and gives an analysis of extreme climate change on Earth. In order to provide a long-term perspective, the first chapter briefly reviews some of the wild gyrations that occurred in the Earth s climate hundreds of millions of years ago: snowball Earth and hothouse Earth. Coming closer to modern times, the effects of continental drift, particularly the closing of the Isthmus of Panama are believed to have contributed to the advent of ice ages in the past three million years. This first chapter sets the stage for a discussion of ice ages in the geological recent past (i.e. within the last three million years, with an emphasis on the last few hundred thousand years). The second chapter discusses geological evidence for ice ages how geologists surmised their existence prior to actual subsurface data that proved the theory. The following two chapters look at ice cores (primarily from Greenland and Antarctica). Chapter 3 discusses how ice core data is processed and Chapter 4 summarizes data obtained from ice cores. Chapter 5 discusses the processing of data obtained from ocean sediments, and summarizes the results, while the following chapter discusses data from other sources, such as "Devil s Cave." Chapter 7 summarizes the experimental results from Chapters 4, 5, and 6. It provides the foundation for comparison with theories in later chapters. In a perfect world, this data would be totally separate and disconnected from theory. Unfortunately, as the author shows, dating of much of the data was accomplished by "tuning" to the astronomical theory, which introduces circular reasoning. Chapter 8 provides a brief overview of the various theories that have been devised to "explain" the patterns of alternating ice ages and interglacials that have occurred over the past three million years. This serves as an introduction to the following three chapters which presents the astronomical theory in its various manifestations, compare the astronomical theory with data, and then compare other theories with data. Finally, Chapter 12 summarizes what we think we know about ice ages and, more importantly, what we don t know. "
This book presents a global hydrographic description of the thermohaline circulation, an introduction to the theoretical aspects of this phenomenon, and observational evidence for the theory. The hydrographic description and the observational evidence are based on data sources available via internet, mainly from the World Oceanographic Experiment (WOCE). The book also offers an introduction to hydrographic analysis and interpretation.
Scientists investigating the interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere now believe that the drag coefficient, and the coefficients of heat transfer and moisture transfer at the sea surface, all increase with an intensification of the wind, reaching high values during a storm. This belief is based on the results of gradient and eddy correlation measurements in the air layer over the water, as weIl as on data concerning the effect of storms on the structure of the upper layer of the ocean and on the planetary atmospheric boundary layer. However, until recently it was impossible to explain just how the above coefficients depend on the wind velocity and to extrapolate this dependence into the region of hurricane velocities. Only by studying nonturbulent mechanisms of transfer, which play an important role dose to the surface of a stormy sea, and mechanisms of spray mediated transfer in particular, was it possible to proceed to a solution of this problem. This book presents the results of laboratory and field studies of the spray field in the air layer above the surface of a stormy sea. Since there is a dose correlation between the generation of spray and the breaking of wind waves, considerable attention is given to the analysis of data on the sea state during a storm. Su'ch data are of interest when solving a number of diverse theoretical and applied problems."
We are only now beginning to understand the climatic impact of the remarkable events that are now occurring in subarctic waters. Researchers, however, have yet to agree upon a predictive model that links change in our northern seas to climate. This volume brings together the body of evidence needed to develop climate models that quantify the ocean exchanges through subarctic seas, measure their variability, and gauge their impact on climate.
Engineers dreams and fossil energy replacement schemes can come true. Man has been tapping the energy of the sea to provide power for his industries for centuries. Tidal energy combined with that of waves and marine winds rank among those most successfully put the work. Large scale plants are capital intensive but smaller ones, particularly built in China, have proven profitable. Since the initiation of the St Malo project in France, similar projects have gone into active service where methods have been devised to cut down on costs, new types of turbines developed and cost competitiveness considerably improved. Tidal power has enormous potential. The book reviews recent progress in extracting power from the ocean, surveys the history of tidal power harnessing and updates a prior publication by the author."
A coastal sea area usually indicates a sea area between a continental shelf break with a water depth of about 200 m and the land shore. About 70% of global fish resources spend part of their life cycle in the coastal seas, which accounts for 90% of marine biomass yield. Freshwater and nutrients from the land have a great influence on the coastal seas, especially since more than half the human population lives within 100 km of a coast. Chemical reactions occur there rapidly between substances from the land as they encounter substances from the ocean. In terms of physics, a coastal sea acts as a boundary layer and kinetic energy is actively exchanged there. But if coastal oceanography were to be summed up in a single sentence, it would be the study that quantitatively makes clear the material transport in the coastal sea area'. Because the physical, chemical and biological processes relate to the material transport in the sea, it can be said the coastal oceanography is a genuinely interdisciplinary study. This book clarifies the quantitative material transport processes in the coastal sea area, mainly from a physical viewpoint.
Estuaries occur along many of the world s coastlines irrespective of geologic setting, energy regime, and depositional environment. They represent the interface between fluvial, coastal and marine environments and they contain the sedimentary record of geological changes among these systems. However, detailed case studies on the morphodynamics and sedimentary evolution of different estuarine environments are notably lacking. This book focuses on the use of high-resolution geophysical techniques, field observations and modeling to investigate the morphodynamics of estuaries on both glaciated and non-glaciated coasts and on different time scales. Papers in this book offer a new approach to nearshore and estuary studies, with an emphasis on multidisciplinary techniques and data integration. Results of these studies have important implications for estuary resource management and shoreline stability. This book will be of interest to sedimentologists, coastal and Quaternary geologists, environmental scientists, and coastal managers."
Spatial and temporal averaging of observational data is widely used in many problems of meteorology, hydrology and related sciences. Several averaging methods have been proposed by various scientists and are used on a regular basis to obtain data averaged in space orfand in time, to yield data which are less influenced by random factors than initial point data are. The significance of averaging meteorological fields has substantially increased nowadays in connection with the problem of global climate change. However important as such change may be, it is very small as compared with the natural variability of atmospheric fields. An accurate averaging is absolutely necessary in order to discover a small climate change signal on the background of strong natural variability that acts as a random noise in this context. It is highly desirable not only to determine the averaged values themselves, but also to estimate the accuracy with which these values are known. To evaluate the accuracy of averaging is not a simple task mainly because the initial point values are not independent from each other, and interconnections between them substantially influence the averaging accuracy.
Coastal zones play a key role in Earth System functioning and form an "edge for society" providing a significant contribution to the life support systems. Goods and services derived from coastal systems depend strongly on multiple transboundary interactions with the land, atmosphere, open ocean and sea bottom. Increasing demands on coastal resources driven by human habitation, food security, recreation and transportation accelerate the exploitation of the coastal landscape and water bodies. Many coastal areas and human activities are subject to increasing risks from natural and man-induced hazards such as flooding resulting from major changes in hydrology of river systems that has reached a global scale. Changes in the hydrological cycle coupled with changes in land and water management alter fluxes of materials transmitted from river catchments to the coastal zone, which have a major effect on coastal ecosystems. The increasing complexity of underlying processes and forcing functions that drive changes on coastal systems are witnessed at a multiplicity of temporal and spatial scales.
Caribbean Tsunamis - A 500-Year History from 1498-1998 broadly
characterizes the nature of tsunamis in the Caribbean Sea, while
bearing in mind both scientific aspects as well as potential
interest by the many governments and populations likely to be
affected by the hazard. Comprehension of the nature of tsunamis and
past effects is crucial for the awareness and education of
populations at risk.
The oceans provide a great challenge for the development and management of planet earth by humankind. This book covers new approaches to the development of the law of the sea, the division of the oceans among states, and new thinking on institutions in depth.
Radioecology in Northern Euroepean Seas summarizes an extensive body of literature on the oceanographic and biological conditions involved in the transfer and accumulation of radionuclides in marine sediment and biota of the Northern European seas. Much of the information has been derived through many decades of investigation carried out by the Murmansk Marine Biological Institute. This book presents the original works, augmented and complemented by work conducted by other institutes during the nuclear era. The synthesis of this extensive body of information forms the basis of a new methodological and theoretical framework describing radionuclide bioaccumulation by marine invertebrate and vertebrate animals, paying special attention to marine food webs leading to humans.
This volume has grown from an Autumn School about "Analysis of Climat Variability - Applications of Statistical techniques" on Elba in November 1993. We have included those lectures which referred explicitly to appli cations of statistical techniques in climate science, since we felt that general descriptions of statistical methods, both at the introductory and at advanced level, are already available. We tried to stress the application side, discussing many examples dealing with the analysis of observed data and with the eval uation of model results (Parts I and II). Some effort is also devoted to the treatment of various techniques of pattern analysis (Part III). Methods like teleconnections, EOF, SSA, CCA and POP are becoming routine tools for the climate researcher and it is probably important for graduate students to be exposed to them early in their academic career in a hopefully clear and concise way. A short subject index is included at the end of the volume to assist the reader in the search of selected topics. Rather than attempting to reference every possible occurrence of some topic we have preferred to indicate the page where that topic is more extensively discussed. The Autumn School was part of the training and education activities of the European Programme on Climatology and Natural Hazards (EPOCH), and is continued under the subsequent research programme (ENVIRONMENT 1990-1994). It aimed at students in general, taking first and second year courses at the graduate level."
nd This book collects the scientific contributions from the lecturers at the 2 edition of the "International School on Marine Chemistry" held in Ustica (Palermo, Italy) from 5 to 12 September 1998. The School was planned with the aim of giving an overview about the chemical processes occurring in the marine environment and the more recent ana- lytical methodologies for their study. The School was organised under the auspices of the Italian Chemical Society and with the financial support of the Marine Reserve of Ustica Island, the Committee for Environment of Italian CNR, the University of Palermo, the Provincia Regionale of Palermo and the Shimadzu-Italia Corporation. The book has been printed with the fi- nancial support of the "Assessorato Ambiente" of the Provincia Regionale of Palermo. All the participants, about a hundred including the lecturers and the Organising Committee, are grateful for the generous support of the agencies. A particular ac- knowledgement from the Editors is to all the lecturers for their availability and cour- tesy and for the high quality of their scientific contributions.
A wide variety of problems are associated with the flow of shallow water, such as atmospheric flows, tides, storm surges, river and coastal flows, lake flows, tsunamis. Numerical simulation is an effective tool in solving them and a great variety of numerical methods are available. The first part of the book summarizes the basic physics of shallow-water flow needed to use numerical methods under various conditions. The second part gives an overview of possible numerical methods, together with their stability and accuracy properties as well as with an assessment of their performance under various conditions. This enables the reader to select a method for particular applications. Correct treatment of boundary conditions (often neglected) is emphasized. The major part of the book is about two-dimensional shallow-water equations but a discussion of the 3-D form is included. The book is intended for researchers and users of shallow-water models in oceanographic and meteorological institutes, hydraulic engineering and consulting. It also provides a major source of information for applied and numerical mathematicians.
On decadal time scales, climate change may result not only from man-made causes, but also from natural processes. This book brings together theoretical conceptions of the physical mechanisms of climate change with observational evidence of these changes. The following key topics are included: Observed Climatic Variability, Predictability of the Atmosphere and Oceans from Days to Decades, and Mechanisms for Decadal to Centennial Climate Variability. Further, there are specialised contributions on the role of the oceanic circulation in climate change. The authors are renowned for their pedagogical skills, and the book is primarily designed for beginners in the field, who have a background in physical science. In addition, it is an invaluable source of information for scientists seeking an overview on climate dynamics.
Wave breaking represents one of the most interesting and challenging problems for fluid mechanics and physical oceanography. Over the last fifteen years our understanding has undergone a dramatic leap forward, and wave breaking has emerged as a process whose physics is clarified and quantified. Ocean wave breaking plays the primary role in the air-sea exchange of momentum, mass and heat, and it is of significant importance for ocean remote sensing, coastal and ocean engineering, navigation and other practical applications. This book outlines the state of the art in our understanding of wave breaking and presents the main outstanding problems. It is a valuable resource for anyone interested in this topic, including researchers, modellers, forecasters, engineers and graduate students in physical oceanography, meteorology and ocean engineering. |
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