This web address has a wonderful 2-year animation of temperature in the North
Atlantic.You can see the Gulf Stream and the pattern of current flow as well
as seasonal temperature shifts.

http://www-mount.ee.umn.edu/~dereklee/micom_movies/micom_movies/temp.html

The next site has several different kinds of animations showing patterns 
that developed during the El Nino of 1982-1983 in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tmap/tmap_model_runs.html

This site contains some animations of global ocean temperature patterns:

http://heron.met.nps.navy.mil/~braccio/woce.html

and here are some other mpegs for specific areas:

http://dubhe.cc.nps.navy.mil/~braccio/mpeg.html

And the next is an article from Science that discusses the role of computer
models in exploring the link between ocean circulation and climate.
Question: what kinds of information can be obatined now that these
computer models and computers capable of running them are becoming available,
and why is that information useful for our understanding of the global climate
system?

http://dubhe.cc.nps.navy.mil/~braccio/science/semtner.html

Here's a site that has information on a global project to measure carbon
dioxide concentrations in the world oceans, important because of its
connection to the greenhouse effect and global warming:

http://www.oasdpo.bnl.gov/~oasdpo/mosaic/DOECO2/


Here's an interesting site that will predict and plot tide levels for any
location you select and for any starting date, with several different time
scales available. Try selecting a couple of different locations at different 
latitudes or on different coasts and take a look at the pattern with respect
to trends in maximum/minimum levels, tide range, etc. You can cover time
intervals ranging from half a day to four weeks. Compare what you see
with the discussion in the textbook.

http://tbone.biol.sc.edu/tide/tideshow.cgi

The next site will show you some spectacular computer-generated images of the
seafloor off the U.S. coast. Worth a look, though we haven't discussed the
geologic processes relevant here.

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/us_margins/

Here's a source for a bunch of different kinds of spectacular animations. You
need to visit it to see the range of what's available. Pick a topic that looks
interesting and see what the animated pattern tells you about the environental
pattern in question.  Formulate an interesting question based on what you 
see or on what you expected to see but didn't.

http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEAWIFS/IMAGES/MOVIES.html

Here's a system for plotting global trends of various oceanographic parameters.
It's from Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, affiliated with Columbia
University in New York. You can choose any variable you want for each type of
data set and graph trends along horizontal slices at different depths within 
the ocean, among other things. It takes a little exploring to see what you can
learn from this site. You might try slicing the ocean at different depths
for several different variables and see what you can learn. For example,
can you figure out about where the thermocline is? (Don't blame me if you
can't, I haven't tried it yet myself!)


http://rainbow.ldgo.columbia.edu/~benno/seminars/dataintro/

You can also visit their Exhibit Hall, which leads in several potential 
directions, mostly dealing with ocean climatology. There are some interesting
animations of ocean dynamics, some of them requiring drivers that I'm not
sure I have. Maybe one of you has more expertise to figure out how to
view these than I do. The first site is the exhibit hall, the second has the
animations.

http://rainbow.ldgo.columbia.edu/exhibits/

http://rainbow.ldgo.columbia.edu/exhibits/ensomovies/

This next one is an archive of ocean climatology data that can be displayed
graphically just by tagging the data set name.

http://ingrid.ldgo.columbia.edu/SOURCES/.IGOSS/