Nonlinear Physical Oceanography - Dijkstra, Henk A.

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Résumé :
In this book, the methodology of dynamical systems theory is applied to investigate the physics of the global ocean circulation. Topics include the dynamics of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean, the stability of the thermohaline circulation and the El Ni?o/Southern Oscillation phenomenon in the Tropical Pacific. On the other hand, the book also deals with the numerical methods for applying bifurcation analysis on large dimensional dynamical systems, with thousands or more degrees of freedom, which arise through discretization of ocean models. The novel approach in understanding the phenomena of climate variability is through a systematic analysis within a hierarchy of models using these techniques. In this way, a nice overview is obtained of the relations between the results of the different models within the hierarchy. Mechanistic description of the physics of the results is provided and, where possible, links with results of state-of-the-art models and observations are sought. The reader is expected to have a background in basic incompressible fluid dynamics and applied mathematics, although the level of the text is mixed and sometimes quite introductory. Each chapter is rather self-contained and many details of derivations are provided. The book is aimed at graduate students and researchers in meteorology, oceanography, and related fields who are interested in tackling fundamental problems in dynamical oceanography and climate dynamics.

Biographie:
Henk A. Dijkstra is Full Professor for Physical Oceanography at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. After graduating in applied mathematics at the University of Groningen in 1984, he worked on his Ph.D. in Groningen on a Spacelab experiment and on Marangoni convection under microgravity conditions. He continued this research in chemical engineering at Cornell University. In 1990 he started working on physical oceanography and became Assistant Professor at Utrecht University, in 1996 an Associate Professor and in 2001 a Full Professor there. Henk Dijkstra has developed, consequently, the nonlinear dynamical systems approach to oceanography. Mainly to emphasize that he first computed explicit bifurcation diagram for a global ocean circulation model and explained the structure of equilibria for a hierarchy of models going from a single-hemispheric to the global configuration. He discovered the multidecadal mode in single-hemispheric thermohaline flows and explained its relevance in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. He demonstrated the existence of steady separation patterns in northern hemispheric western boundary currents and explained the subannual variability through barotropic destabilization of these states. He first analysed the stability of the double-gyre wind driven flows in quasi-geostrophic one- and two-layer models and demonstrated its relevance with respect to low-frequency variability of the ocean gyres. He became member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2002. He has published more than 100 papers and a book on Nonlinear Physical Oceanography in 2000. He has organized for several years a session at EGS/EGU meetings on this topic....

Sommaire:
1. Introduction.- 2. Background Material.- 3. A Dynamical Systems Point of View.- 4. Numerical Techniques.- 5. The Wind-Driven Ocean Circulation.- 6. The Thermohaline Ocean Circulation.- 7. The Dynamics and Physics of ENSO.