Paleoceanography

Paleoceanography is the study of ancient oceans dating back hundreds to billions of years to restore physical, chemical and biological properties. This is a study of the history of the global ocean and its small watersheds. Paleoceanography provides data on the boundary conditions of an ocean-atmosphere system that are considerably different from those in the present world, including colder (‘ice ages’) and warmer worlds. It also gives information on previous climate change rates and probable correlations (or lack thereof) with atmospheric pCO2 levels. Our goal is to determine which characteristics of the present world can serve as a pointer to the past and which aspects of the ocean-atmosphere ecosystem of the current world with its present biota are merely one conceivable, not the sole, stable mode.

Oceanography:

Oceanography (also called Oceanology) is the study of the ocean’s physical, chemical, and biological properties, their origins and structure, as well as the marine life types that live there. 

Importance of Oceanography:

• A greater understanding of the world’s seas allows scientists to more correctly predict long-term meteorological and climatic changes, as well as more effective resource exploitation on the planet. 
• Oceanography is also critical for determining the impact of pollutants on ocean waters and maintaining the quality of the oceans’ waters in the face of increasing human demands.
• It helps to improve the forecast for natural (e.g. hurricanes) and man-made risks by better predicting (using models) changes in weather and climate (e.g. oil spills).

How Oceanographers work:

Oceanographers research the water with a range of instruments, and many of these studies involve more than one branch. Oceanographers use ships to collect individual water, sediment, and biological samples (Research Vessels). They use autonomous sampling equipment like buoys and gliders to acquire data on time and space scales that a ship cannot. Oceanographers can acquire a worldwide perspective of some parameters via remote sensing from aircraft and satellites.

Oceanographic’s case study:

Oceanographers from all over the world are investigating topics as diverse as the ocean itself. Oceanographers, for example, are looking into how melting sea ice is affecting the feeding and migration patterns of whales that live in the coldest parts of the ocean. Gabrielle Corradino, a North Carolina State University 2017 Global Change Fellow and National Geographic Explorer, is also interested in marine ecosystems, though in a much warmer environment. Corradino is researching how climate change affects microscopic phytoplankton populations and the fish that feed on them. Her fieldwork included five weeks in the Gulf of Mexico filtering seawater to capture phytoplankton and protozoa—the smallest, but most important, components of the sea’s food chain.

Physical Oceanography:

Physical oceanography is concerned with characterising and comprehending the changing patterns of ocean circulation and fluid motion, as well as the distribution of its attributes such as temperature, salinity, dissolved chemical element and gas concentrations. Physical oceanography includes examining the ocean’s interaction with the atmosphere, how it stores and releases heat, the physical qualities (or chemical composition) of water across the ocean, as well as current creation and movement. 

Physical oceanography is a constantly changing science in which tools, types of observations, and techniques of analysis are constantly improved and refined. Recent developments in oceanographic theory, hardware, sensor platforms, and software development have resulted in substantial breakthroughs in marine science and the presentation of findings. The introduction of digital computers altered data collecting processes as well as data reduction and analysis. The individual scientist is no longer intimately familiar with each data point and its contribution to his or her study. 

Chemical Oceanography:

Chemical oceanography is the observation of the chemical additives of the seas, their reactions, and their transformation paths. Understanding the distribution and reactivity of chemical additives in the ocean is a key issue of chemical oceanography. Chemical oceanography necessitates the research of bodily, geological, atmospheric, and organic techniques so that you can display how factors and their compounds, each herbal and anthropogenic, range over a huge variety of spatial and temporal scales. For example, tons of attempts have long gone into reading the uptake of chemical species via the means of organisms, because quantities of detail are required for increase, however, an excessive amount of detail can cause toxicity and death. Physical chemistry has traditionally provided a conceptual framework for the outline of oceanic chemistry.

Conclusion: 

Water covers more or less 70% of the Earth’s surface. Almost ninety-seven per cent of that water is salt water from the world’s oceans. Given the scale of the sea and the fast improvements in technology, there seems to be no limit to what can and may be found in oceanography science.