This course covers the topics:
| * Earthquakes and Earth structure |
* Near events
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| * Seismic waves |
* Propagation effects at near distances |
| * Seismic sources |
* Regional phases propagation in the upper mantle |
| * Seismic phase |
* Upper mantle structure |
| * Building a seismogram |
* Analysis of regional and far-regional seismograms |
| * Stress and strain |
* The nature of the global wavefield |
| * Plane wavers |
* Body waves in the mantle |
| * Wavefronts and rays |
* Body waves in the Earth core |
| * Rays in stratification |
* Surface waves and modal analysis |
| * Waves in stratification |
* Receiver based studies |
| * Reflection and transmission |
* The influence of heterogeneity |
| * Building the response of a model |
* Imaging the Earth |
| * Constructing the wavefield |
* 3D global structure |
| * Body waves and surface waves |
* Mapping the lithosphere and upper mantle. |
PHYS 3034: Physics of Fluid flows
This course aims to establish fundamental concepts in fluid dynamics, and to apply these concepts to a range of geophysical applications. The course begins with an overview of the field of fluid mechanics, and a description of the physics governing fluid flow. These physical principles are applied to a number of examples, including:
* Waves
* Single-layer flows
* Convection and fluid instability.
The course includes:
* The dynamics of buoyancy-driven flows
* The effects of planetary rotation, allowing investigation into the circulation of the oceans and the atmosphere.
* The effects of ocean-atmosphere coupling, which leads to climate dynamics.
EMSC8009: Melting Polar Ice Sheets, Sea Level Variations and Climate Change.
Changes in Earth's temperature cause changes in the size of the polar ice caps, with corresponding changes in global sea levels as water moves between the oceans and the continental ice sheets. Sea levels are currently rising as a result of present-day increases in global mean temperature and some claim that West Antarctica and Greenland glaciers are melting rapidly. But how do we know this - how are changes in ice and ocean volumes estimated? Observations of the motions of close-earth satellites and measurements from these satellites to the surface of the Earth enable these changes to be measured and they provide important constraints on the physical properties of the planet and on the physical processes occurring on and within it.
This course covers:
*
The Earth's gravity field and the geophysical interpretation of temporal gravity changes
*
The measurement of sea level variations from tide gauges and satellite altimetry
*
Mass balance estimates of polar regions
*
The theory and observation of the motion of satellites
*
Position determination on the Earth from satellite tracking data
EMSC 8011: Earth Materials: Crystal Structures, Defect Microstructures and Mechanical Behaviour.
This course will give an introduction to the physical behaviour of minerals and rocks at pressure and temperatures encountered in the Earth’s interior.
Topics include:
* The stability of major rock-forming minerals and the connection between their crystal structure and their physical properties will be explored.
* Microscopic defects and grain boundary regions will be discussed because they control the mechanical behaviour of the planet as observed on all scales.
* A further focus will be the concepts of stress and strain and their relationships to elasticity, strength and rheology of earth materials.
During the course different techniques will be presented in theory and practice to show how geological materials and their behaviour can be characterized and tested in the laboratory.
EMSC 8016: Plate Tectonics and Mantle Dynamics.
The course will briefly survey the evidence for moving plates and the distinctive ways in which the plates move and evolve. A review of heat conduction and viscous fluid flow will lead into a simple but fundamental theory of thermal convection, emphasising the key role of thermal boundary layers and extracting simple scaling rules. The distinctive behaviours of thermal boundary layers in the mantle. controlled by dramatic changes in the mechanical properties of mantle material, will be explored. Predictions from these ideas will be used to identify the most useful constraints from geophysical and geochemical observations. The course will conclude with brief indications of the complicating role of compositional density and differences and some potential implications for earth history.
The following courses are not being run this semester but can be used towards an honours degree
by aggreement with your supervisor.
EMSC8010: Ice sheets, sea level and the physics of the Earth.
This course addresses the question of how the Earth and ocean respond to the growth and decay of ice sheets during glacial cycles. As ice melts, sea level rises, and the Earth responds to the changing surface loads. The result is a complex spatial and temporal pattern of sea level change observations, which contain information on the Earth's viscosity structure and on the history of the ice sheets and climate. The course covers: The observational evidence for sea-level change and glaciation; The geophysical modeling of the Earth's deformation and; The geophysical and climatic inferences that can be drawn from the field evidence.
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