Journal subject areas
The journal covers instrument development, in situ observations, remote sensing, data assimilation, laboratory, and numerical and theoretical studies of the following:
- air–sea fluxes;
- surface waves;
- sea ice;
- internal waves;
- turbulence and mixing;
- temperature, salinity, and density fields;
- ocean currents and eddies;
- tides, equatorial waves, and midlatitude waves;
- chemical, biochemical, and biological distributions and transport;
- chemical, biochemical, biological, and physical interactions;
- ocean productivity;
- ocean ecology;
- sediment processes;
- sea level;
- operational oceanography.
The coverage of the journal is worldwide and includes the deep ocean, the shelf seas, and inland seas, now, in the past, and the future. By publishing articles freely on the Internet, the journal aims to make the latest oceanographic developments rapidly available to all people wherever they are. By encouraging discussion of each paper, it aims to raise standards, improve the flow of information, identify the limits to our present understanding, and stimulate further effective oceanographic research.
The following subject areas are used by authors to describe each paper. The same subject areas are also used by the alert service and the editor assignment. The subject areas are split into two groups: approach & properties and processes.
| Approach | In situ observations, remote sensing, instrument development and techniques, laboratory studies, analytic theory, numerical models, data assimilation, operational oceanography |
| Properties and processes | Biogeochemistry and nutrient cycles, biological oceanography and marine ecology, mesoscale to submesoscale dynamics, internal waves, turbulence and mixing, overturning circulation, gyres and water masses, climate and modes of variability, sea level, tides, tsunamis and surges, interactions with the atmosphere or cryosphere, sediments and benthic processes, coastal and near-shore processes |