182
Carl Wunsch
Others who were involved from the beginning almost surely have a very different
point of view. If a serious history of physical oceanography in the last quarter of the
twentieth century is ever written, the material here should be regarded as at best a
starting point.
At the outset, I note that much oceanography was conducted outside the WOCE
framework, and it would be an error to claim that all of the advances that took place
during the 1990s were attributable to it. But WOCE was surely the centerpiece, many
observational and theoretical programs were put in place to take advantage of its
existence, and the overlap of investigators working inside and outside the program
was so great that attributing to WOCE much of the progress of that time is not a wild
exaggeration.
ORIGINS
Background Science
One can trace the origins of what eventually came to be called WOCE to what, for a
few of us, seemed to be an intellectual crisis in physical oceanography, circa 1975. In
1973, a field and theoretical program known as the Mid-Ocean Dynamics Experiment
(MODE-1) had been carried out by a consortium of physical oceanographers from
the United States and United Kingdom. This program, summarized by the MODE
Group (1978), had exploited the then-new technologies of current meters, temperature recorders, bottom pressure sensors, XBTs, neutrally buoyant floats, and CTDs to
demonstrate unequivocally the existence in the ocean of an intense eddy field. Prior to
that time, the small-scale structures visible in hydrographic sections (e.g., Fuglister,
1960) had been regarded as a kind of fuzzy “noise” of no particular interest. A bit
of information was available (e.g., Crease, 1962) suggesting from the primitive neutrally buoyant floats circa 1955, of remarkably intense, presumed transient motions
at depth in the western North Atlantic. Fragmentary records existed from a number of
comparatively brief measurements (see, for example, Monin et al., 1977, Chapter 5).
Physical oceanographers knew about internal waves, and were aware of the importance in the atmosphere of eddies [going back at least to Jeffreys (1933), and Victor
Starr’s work in the 1940s; see Lorenz (1967)]. But until about 1971, the technology
simply did not exist to do more than speculate about the hypothetical importance in
the ocean of time-dependent motions.
1
1 Soviet scientists had published a number of papers in their own literature that were interpreted by them
as showing eddylike motions. Western scientists did not, however, take their results as seriously as they
might have because of the language barrier; the primitive nature of the equipment (e.g., numbers were
recorded by printing them onto a paper tape); and the locations such as the Black Sea. Monin et al. (1977,
p. 133) list both Soviet and Western observations that, with hindsight, show eddies everywhere. (Note that
in the Soviet literature, the term “synoptic” is used for the less proper Western adjective “mesoscale.”)
Carl Wunsch
Others who were involved from the beginning almost surely have a very different
point of view. If a serious history of physical oceanography in the last quarter of the
twentieth century is ever written, the material here should be regarded as at best a
starting point.
At the outset, I note that much oceanography was conducted outside the WOCE
framework, and it would be an error to claim that all of the advances that took place
during the 1990s were attributable to it. But WOCE was surely the centerpiece, many
observational and theoretical programs were put in place to take advantage of its
existence, and the overlap of investigators working inside and outside the program
was so great that attributing to WOCE much of the progress of that time is not a wild
exaggeration.
ORIGINS
Background Science
One can trace the origins of what eventually came to be called WOCE to what, for a
few of us, seemed to be an intellectual crisis in physical oceanography, circa 1975. In
1973, a field and theoretical program known as the Mid-Ocean Dynamics Experiment
(MODE-1) had been carried out by a consortium of physical oceanographers from
the United States and United Kingdom. This program, summarized by the MODE
Group (1978), had exploited the then-new technologies of current meters, temperature recorders, bottom pressure sensors, XBTs, neutrally buoyant floats, and CTDs to
demonstrate unequivocally the existence in the ocean of an intense eddy field. Prior to
that time, the small-scale structures visible in hydrographic sections (e.g., Fuglister,
1960) had been regarded as a kind of fuzzy “noise” of no particular interest. A bit
of information was available (e.g., Crease, 1962) suggesting from the primitive neutrally buoyant floats circa 1955, of remarkably intense, presumed transient motions
at depth in the western North Atlantic. Fragmentary records existed from a number of
comparatively brief measurements (see, for example, Monin et al., 1977, Chapter 5).
Physical oceanographers knew about internal waves, and were aware of the importance in the atmosphere of eddies [going back at least to Jeffreys (1933), and Victor
Starr’s work in the 1940s; see Lorenz (1967)]. But until about 1971, the technology
simply did not exist to do more than speculate about the hypothetical importance in
the ocean of time-dependent motions.
1
1 Soviet scientists had published a number of papers in their own literature that were interpreted by them
as showing eddylike motions. Western scientists did not, however, take their results as seriously as they
might have because of the language barrier; the primitive nature of the equipment (e.g., numbers were
recorded by printing them onto a paper tape); and the locations such as the Black Sea. Monin et al. (1977,
p. 133) list both Soviet and Western observations that, with hindsight, show eddies everywhere. (Note that
in the Soviet literature, the term “synoptic” is used for the less proper Western adjective “mesoscale.”)