190
Carl Wunsch
and without the managerial infrastructure available to the meteorologists who had
organized FGGE—with their national meteorological agencies as a base. Oceanographers had nothing remotely resembling such governmental organizations.
PLANNING IT
Shortly after the CCCO discussion, and the appointment of the Bretherton Committee,
I spent a year in Cambridge, England, with the help of a Guggenheim Fellowship. In
addition, Walter Munk came for six months, and we split a Fulbright Award (inevitably
then known to our wives as a half-bright award). During this period, when we were
focussed on trying to turn ocean acoustic tomography into a practical observational
method, I attended a Royal Society discussion meeting on oceanography in the 1990s
for which Munk and I wrote a speculative paper (Munk and Wunsch, 1982) that
laid out a rough vision of how the emerging technologies might be deployed to give
a much more realistic understanding of the time-dependent ocean. [A less formal
account appears in the Munk Festschrift (Garrett and Wunsch, 1984).]
How does one obtain legitimacy for a proposed national and international
program? In the United States, recognition appeared to come through the National
Research Council (National Academy of Sciences), through what is now called the
Ocean Studies Board (OSB; the name has changed several times over the years. It was
then called the Board on Ocean Science and Policy). A small self-appointed steering
group (including Baker, Nowlin, Broecker, Wunsch) agreed to try to put together a
U.S. national program. I went with some of the steering committee to a meeting of
the Board in Washington where I presented the idea of a global ocean circulation
program. That both Baker and I were members of the Board appeared to make the
request particularly simple. To my very great surprise, the request was flatly refused.
The Chairman of the Board (J. Steele, then Director of WHOI) announced that there
would indeed be a national oceanographic program, but that it was to include biology,
and he would be the chairman.
I returned from the OSB meeting convinced we had failed to even get out of
the starting gate. About a week later, however, Steele telephoned me to say that,
of course, we could have a workshop, and that the Board would endorse and help
organize it. Someone had gotten to him in the interim. Steele was evidently fearful
that the physical and chemical oceanographers would have a major program and that
the biologists would be left out. Steele’s efforts to construct a parallel biologically
oriented program eventually became GLOBEC, but that is someone else’s story.
A small steering committee (D. J. Baker, F. Bretherton, W. Broecker, J.
McWilliams, W. Nowlin, F. Webster, and C. Wunsch) was appointed through the
Ocean Climate Research Committee of the Board to organize a Workshop, which
took place in August 1983 at the National Academy of Sciences building in Woods
Hole, Massachusetts. About 70 people were officially present, including agency representatives and many from abroad. The resulting report (Ocean Climate Research Committee, 1984) was based upon various white papers plus discussion. Its publication
Carl Wunsch
and without the managerial infrastructure available to the meteorologists who had
organized FGGE—with their national meteorological agencies as a base. Oceanographers had nothing remotely resembling such governmental organizations.
PLANNING IT
Shortly after the CCCO discussion, and the appointment of the Bretherton Committee,
I spent a year in Cambridge, England, with the help of a Guggenheim Fellowship. In
addition, Walter Munk came for six months, and we split a Fulbright Award (inevitably
then known to our wives as a half-bright award). During this period, when we were
focussed on trying to turn ocean acoustic tomography into a practical observational
method, I attended a Royal Society discussion meeting on oceanography in the 1990s
for which Munk and I wrote a speculative paper (Munk and Wunsch, 1982) that
laid out a rough vision of how the emerging technologies might be deployed to give
a much more realistic understanding of the time-dependent ocean. [A less formal
account appears in the Munk Festschrift (Garrett and Wunsch, 1984).]
How does one obtain legitimacy for a proposed national and international
program? In the United States, recognition appeared to come through the National
Research Council (National Academy of Sciences), through what is now called the
Ocean Studies Board (OSB; the name has changed several times over the years. It was
then called the Board on Ocean Science and Policy). A small self-appointed steering
group (including Baker, Nowlin, Broecker, Wunsch) agreed to try to put together a
U.S. national program. I went with some of the steering committee to a meeting of
the Board in Washington where I presented the idea of a global ocean circulation
program. That both Baker and I were members of the Board appeared to make the
request particularly simple. To my very great surprise, the request was flatly refused.
The Chairman of the Board (J. Steele, then Director of WHOI) announced that there
would indeed be a national oceanographic program, but that it was to include biology,
and he would be the chairman.
I returned from the OSB meeting convinced we had failed to even get out of
the starting gate. About a week later, however, Steele telephoned me to say that,
of course, we could have a workshop, and that the Board would endorse and help
organize it. Someone had gotten to him in the interim. Steele was evidently fearful
that the physical and chemical oceanographers would have a major program and that
the biologists would be left out. Steele’s efforts to construct a parallel biologically
oriented program eventually became GLOBEC, but that is someone else’s story.
A small steering committee (D. J. Baker, F. Bretherton, W. Broecker, J.
McWilliams, W. Nowlin, F. Webster, and C. Wunsch) was appointed through the
Ocean Climate Research Committee of the Board to organize a Workshop, which
took place in August 1983 at the National Academy of Sciences building in Woods
Hole, Massachusetts. About 70 people were officially present, including agency representatives and many from abroad. The resulting report (Ocean Climate Research Committee, 1984) was based upon various white papers plus discussion. Its publication