Interests

large-scale ocean circulation
water mass analysis
tracers and water masses in numerical models
the fresh water budget of the oceanic mixed layer
rainfall measurement over the tropical ocean
science, civilization and society.

Matthias Tomczak

Diplom-Ozeanogr., Dr. rer. nat. (Kiel), Dr. habil. (Hamburg).

School of Chemistry, Physics & Earth Sciences

Professor of Oceanography

Contacts:

Phone: +61 - 8 - 8201 2298

Fax: +61 - 8 - 8201 2676

Email: Matthias.Tomczak@flinders.edu.au

Postal: School of Chemistry, Physics and Earth Sciences
Flinders University
GPO Box 2100
Adelaide 5001
Australia

Location: Room: 315 Building: 36 (Earth Sciences)

Links:

Oceanography web page

personal profile in Faces of Science

Comments about this page: Matthias.Tomczak@flinders.edu.au

Page Last Updated: 10 February 2004

Overview:	Teaching responsibilities (including online teaching material)	Introduction to Oceanography Regional Oceanography Shelf and Coastal Oceanography Global Climate Data Bases Science, Civilization and Society
	Teaching related projects	Basic Exercises in Physical Oceanography (web based) Web-based oceanographic utilities A regional interactive textbook for South East Asia (in preparation)
	Research projects	water masses and circulation air/sea interaction OMP analysis rainfall maesurement over the tropical ocean
	Publications	online publications journal publications
	Other activities	How to build a teaching web page SOAP, a new international oceanographic research program

Teaching responsibilities

Until last year I was the co-ordinator for the first year topic Marine Sciences 1 and Marine Sciences for Teachers and taught its oceanography component. The lecture notes for the physical oceanography part of this topic can be viewed on the web and are also available as a CD-ROM. If you want to see what others say about these notes, check out the comment page. I also have computer based exercises for this topic, which can be run over the web and are also included in the CD-ROM version.
I teach the second year topic The Ocean. The topic is based on Regional Oceanography: an Introduction (M. Tomczak and J. Stuart Godfrey), a textbook that was first published in 1994 and is now available in an improved second edition from Daya Publishers, Delhi. The details for ordering the book through local bookshops or online from the publisher can be found at my web page Regional Oceanography, where a colour version in pdf format is also available for downloading.
I no longer teach the second year topic The Shelf and Coastal Zone but still have lecture notes on the web. They are included in the CD-ROM version of my website.
I teach the Honours topic Global Climate Data Bases, a new topic to start in 2004.
I am planning to teach a new topic Science, Civilization and Society, a "general interest" topic for students of all faculties. The topic material can be viewed on the web.

Teaching related projects

Some years back I developed a set of "Basic Exercises in Physical Oceanography" for use in the computer assisted learning unit of Flinders University. It was originally developed in proprietory software and only accessible in the university computer lab, but during three weeks at sea in December 1999 I converted it into web based laboratories, which are now available here. Quite a few new exercises have been added since then.
I prepared some on-line web calculators and plotting routines to assist my student laboratories. There are calculators for density, sound speed, distance between stations and others. Plotting routines allow you to produce graphs of current meter time series and station data. These utilities are publicly available.
I am currently working on an introductory textbook on physical oceanography for South East Asia. This project is organized and supported by the Southeast Asia START Regional Centre (SEA START RC). It will be finished later in 2004 and will then consist of a textbook in pdf format and a CD with data, software, utilities and exercises taylored to the region. Most likely it will then also be added to my oceanography web site and CD.

Research projects

My involvement in WOCE, TOGA-COARE and other climate related research during the last decade of the previous century is documented in

WOCE,
TOGA, and
NGAC.

One of my main interests has been and continues to be quantitative water mass analysis. I developed Optimum Multiparameter (OMP) analysis and take an active interest in the OMP Analysis User Group. I developed the Matlab code for OMP Analysis version 2. The latest version, which includes some amendments by Johannes Karstensen, can be downloaded from the website of the OMP Analysis User Group.

Further development of OMP analysis concentrates on a technique to derive time variations in the properties of source water masses from observations at great distances from the source. This is a highly nonlinear optimization problem that requires careful nudging towards the oceanographically most sensible solution.

Another research project I am pursuing is the calibration of rainfall data over the tropical oceans, particularly in convective rain systems, which produce spatially and temporally patchy rainfall. A proof of concept experiment to use navigational radar for rainfall measurement is documented in one paper and a website (see below under publications). At present I concentrate on the comparison of satellite derived rainfall against rain gauges on small tropical islands and moored buoys.

Publications

Links to papers and conference contributions available on the web:

Age determination of mixed water masses using CFC and oxygen data (Johannes Karstensen and Matthias Tomczak, Journal of Geophysical Research 103: 18599-18610, 1998.)
Water mass formation, upwelling and fronts in the Great Australian Bight (Michael Herzfeld, Michael Schodlok and Matthias Tomczak, poster presented at the TOS and IOC Meeting on Coastal and Marginal Seas at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France, 1-4 June 1998)
Density Compensation in the Subtropical Front of the Indian Ocean south of Australia Part 1: winter (Matthias Tomczak and Lindsay Pender, a preliminary data report)
Density Compensation in the Subtropical Front of the Indian Ocean south of Australia Part 2: summer (Matthias Tomczak and Lindsay Pender, a preliminary data report)
Rainfall measurements in tropical ocean regions with navigational radar (Matthias Tomczak, Ivan Lebedev and Aneurin Henry-Edwards, poster presented at the WCRP/SCOR Workshop on Intercomparison and Validation of Ocean-Atmospere Flux Fields in Washington DC, 21 - 24 May 2001)
Aspects of the East Australian Current mesoscale variability observed by satellite altimetry and the WOCE PCM3 current meter array ( Mauricio M. Mata, Susan Wijffels, John Church and Matthias Tomczak, poster presented at the Western Boundary Current Poster Session, December 2001)
Changes of water mass properties observed in the Bermuda Time Series (BATS) (Heidi Leffanue and Matthias Tomczak, paper submitted to Journal of Marine Systems)
A detailed study of the density compensated Subtropical Front of the Indian Ocean south of Australia (Matthias Tomczak and Lindsay Pender, a preliminary data report)

For more information, consult my list of recent publications which covers the last few years.

Other activities

As part of my involvement of what the university calls "flexible delivery" (replacing face to face teaching by computer tuition) I prepared some very brief instructions how to produce web pages for teaching purposes.

I am also looking after the international research program SOAP, but that is another story ...

Web address of this page: http://www.es.flinders.edu.au/~mattom/home.html
Last update of this page: 10 February 2004