How oceanography reveals a connected Earth system

Oceanography is the scientific study of the ocean, including its physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. This path helps readers understand what ocean research can reveal about the ocean and its connections with Earth. It moves from the foundations of oceanography to themes in ocean circulation, regional change, and the ocean's relationship with the atmosphere.

2 articles, 1 video, 1 book · about 44 min of reading and viewing

The reading path

1. Read
   

   oceanography · Wikipedia · 22 min read

   The 1872 to 1876 Challenger expedition was the seminal event in founding modern oceanography. As the first true oceanographic cruise, it laid the groundwork for an entire academic and research discipline. Meridional overturning circulation is the name increasingly used for the thermohaline circulation, a system that connects the ocean basins and depends primarily on sea water density. The name accounts more accurately for driving factors beyond temperature and salinity. Ocean heat content is extra heat stored in the ocean from changes in Earth's energy balance. Its increase contributes to sea level rise through thermal expansion.

2. Read
   

   New Indian Ocean Program Builds on a Scientific Legacy - Eos · Eos · 11 min read

   Oceanography can now track how the Indian Ocean changes across spatial and temporal scales and how those fluctuations couple to the atmosphere. IIOE-2 aims to explain how geological, ocean, and atmospheric processes shape the region's dynamics and how those dynamics affect climate, extreme events, ecosystems, and human populations.

3. Watch
   

   The Deepest Point in the World: Crash Course Geology #12 · YouTube · 11 min watch

   The video explores marine geology, including hydrothermal vents, deep trenches, the ocean floor and ocean currents. It presents marine geology as the science of "what the heck is going on with the ocean floor?"

4. Book
   

   The Sea Around Us · Bookshop.org

   The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson includes a new chapter in which Jeffrey Levinton brings its scientific side up to date, incorporating recent thinking on continental drift, coral reefs, the spread of the ocean floor, ocean deterioration, and mass extinction of sea life.

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