Customer Reviews

Introduction to Physical Oceanography

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Mellor (2008) is a textbook intended for use in college courses for upper division undergraduate and beginning graduate students. The usefulness of this book might depend on whether its users enroll in an oceanography program or in a physics department.

In oceanography programs, two common ways exist for directing an introduction to physical oceanography course. One approach does it in two courses, with description in the first semester and dynamics in the second.

Using this approach, students with almost any background including physics take the descriptive course, then those with backgrounds in physics, mathematics or engineering continue to take the dynamics course.

Mellor (2008) is not descriptive. This means Mellor (2008) could not compete with Pickard and Emery (1990). It could only fit in the second course based on dynamics. Mellor (2008) could compete with Pickard and Pond (1983).

Different users are likely to have different opinions on how well Mellor could compete with Pickard and Pond. Mellor has the advantage of having a recent publication date. It has the disadvantage of seeming unready for publication.

Someone searching on the Internet for more information on Mellor (2008) can find a single-spaced errata sheet that fills an entire page. It appears in two parts. One part bears the title Errata in First Printing and Corrected in Second Printing. The second part is longer and appears as Errata in First Printing Which Remain in Second Printing.

The first part hints at the possibility that Mellor (2008) was not ready for the first printing. The second part is longer and could turn off some prospective buyers who wonder why known errors remain in the second printing.

Mellor (2008) has a second disadvantage in competing with Pickard and Pond (1983). Mellor's book has more material at different levels of digestibility than its Pickard and Pond competitor.

Mellor (2008) also misses a chance to introduce a history of physical oceanography. This is important in Mellor's case, since it was progress in dynamics that allowed physical oceanography to flower from exploration to science.

We might expect the more specialized textbooks for small audiences to cost more than introductions. The price of Mellor (2008) suggests specialization with material above its intended level. It is about twice as expensive as Pickard and Pond (1983).

A second way of teaching introduction to physical oceanography courses brings students with backgrounds in physics, chemistry, geology and biology together in a single course. For a text to be useful in this mixed-audience course, it must include a mix of descriptive and dynamic approaches.

Mellor (2008) would not be useful in such a course because it ignores descriptive approaches. This means it cannot compete with Knauss (2005), which introduces description and dynamics in a single volume.

One might wonder if the Mellor book should remove Oceanography from its title and call itself Ocean Physics. After doing this, it would be necessary to weed out errors and smooth out differing levels of understandability before continuing. After polishing the result, it might be desirable to promote making an ocean physics course available to all undergraduate physics majors worldwide, possibly using Mellor's new Ocean Physics textbook. After taking such a course as undergraduates, new graduate students in physical oceanography would have a jump start on their careers.

To compare the Mellor book with physical oceanography textbooks, see my reviews of Introduction to Physical Oceanography by Knauss (2005), Descriptive Physical Oceanography by Pickard and Emery (1990) and Introductory Dynamical Oceanography, Second Edition by Pickard and Pond (1983).