Oceanography: Essentials

Chemical Reference Materials for Oceanography by Michio Aoyama (Editor); Chikako Cheong (Editor); Akihiko Murata (Editor) This book explores the history, production, and certification of reference materials for essential parameters in oceanography and provides a comprehensive understanding of them to readers. Because inorganic macro-nutrients, salinity, dissolved oxygen, and carbonate system parameters, including dissolved inorganic carbon, total alkalinity, and pH, are essential parameters in oceanography, they can be used to define biogeographic provinces, monitor ocean health, and detect decadal-scale oceanic climate changes. Without reference materials for these parameters, it would be difficult to produce reliable data sets or long-term baseline studies that are required to verify global change and oceanic stability.

Climate to a Fish Sandwich: Why We Study the Ocean's Circulation by Robert Weisberg This book addresses why just about everything that we experience on Earth depends upon the ocean circulation, the movement of the ocean water. Intended for a general lay-person audience, or as a non-science major undergraduate text, the book explains (in a non-mathematical manner) how the ocean circulation and the ocean's interactions with the atmosphere provides the basic underpinnings for global climate and ecology. It then launches into more specific topics of societal relevance (e.g., how the coastal ocean and estuaries work, sea level variations, ocean waves and extreme tsunamis, hurricane storm surge and wave damage, how ocean temperatures change seasonally, harmful algal blooms, alternative energy potential and fish recruitment).

Descriptive Physical Oceanography by Lynne D. Talley Descriptive Physical Oceanography: An Introduction, Seventh Edition is the basic go-to book for learning about what the ocean looks like physically - its motion (circulation, waves, tides, eddies), its physical properties (temperature/salinity distributions and equation of state), its forcing, and its role in the climate system. It includes detailed chapters on each ocean basin and a chapter on the major marginal seas, describing the forcing, circulation, and water masses in each region.