Interview with Klaus Wyrtki
217
Already in the fifties or sixties?
GEOSECS—seventies. The eddies were the first big problem after the war. I don’t
think the eddies started in the 50s, definitely in the 60s.
Once I got a student who wanted to make a Ph.D. Peter Duncan came from
South Africa and he brought along the results of one cruise that they made to the
southwest of Africa and I did nothing but apply another principle of W¨ ust. If you
have observations, which haven’t been used yet, you write a paper about it. I made
him immediately write a paper about an eddy in the subtropical convergence south
of South Africa. He wrote that paper in ten days and it was accepted by JGR. The
background was a frivolous statement I had made in a class: any graduate student
can write a paper that will be accepted by JGR and I gave them the recipe: New
observations that haven’t been published, a straightforward analysis, no controversial
statements, 4 pages, 3 illustrations.
Four pages text?
Yes, at most. Today I would say two pages.
Why was the interest in eddies so big? One thing of course, it was possible to observe eddies; on the other side, could you already estimate what the role, what the
importance of eddies in the general climate dynamics is?
That was more ocean dynamics than climate dynamics. People thought that a better knowledge of ocean eddies would explain the energy dissipation in the western
boundary currents and in ocean circulation in general, because all ocean circulation
theories were dependent on dissipation.
So, that was the time of the fifties and sixties.
These were the 50s, 60s, early 70s.
Then came the International Decade of Ocean Exploration. All these big projects
were started in the seventies: the biochemical cycles, Antarctica, the Drake Passage,
there was NORPAX, which was the project I joined in.
Is it fair to say that before the war people were interested more in the deep ocean
circulation and the overall picture and after the war more in processes and in case
studies on eddies. In the seventies it was the phase of integration, so that the people
were more interested in longer observations, in variability. Is that right?
You can say so. Actually NORPAX was the first big project that studied ocean–
atmosphere interaction. The database became sufficient to look at a larger picture—
that means how an ocean affects a continent.
Was Namias very important in this respect?
Of course, I had a very close relationship with Namias. When you ask for people:
there were of course Bjerknes and Namias. We were together very often in meetings
and had many long discussions.
217
Already in the fifties or sixties?
GEOSECS—seventies. The eddies were the first big problem after the war. I don’t
think the eddies started in the 50s, definitely in the 60s.
Once I got a student who wanted to make a Ph.D. Peter Duncan came from
South Africa and he brought along the results of one cruise that they made to the
southwest of Africa and I did nothing but apply another principle of W¨ ust. If you
have observations, which haven’t been used yet, you write a paper about it. I made
him immediately write a paper about an eddy in the subtropical convergence south
of South Africa. He wrote that paper in ten days and it was accepted by JGR. The
background was a frivolous statement I had made in a class: any graduate student
can write a paper that will be accepted by JGR and I gave them the recipe: New
observations that haven’t been published, a straightforward analysis, no controversial
statements, 4 pages, 3 illustrations.
Four pages text?
Yes, at most. Today I would say two pages.
Why was the interest in eddies so big? One thing of course, it was possible to observe eddies; on the other side, could you already estimate what the role, what the
importance of eddies in the general climate dynamics is?
That was more ocean dynamics than climate dynamics. People thought that a better knowledge of ocean eddies would explain the energy dissipation in the western
boundary currents and in ocean circulation in general, because all ocean circulation
theories were dependent on dissipation.
So, that was the time of the fifties and sixties.
These were the 50s, 60s, early 70s.
Then came the International Decade of Ocean Exploration. All these big projects
were started in the seventies: the biochemical cycles, Antarctica, the Drake Passage,
there was NORPAX, which was the project I joined in.
Is it fair to say that before the war people were interested more in the deep ocean
circulation and the overall picture and after the war more in processes and in case
studies on eddies. In the seventies it was the phase of integration, so that the people
were more interested in longer observations, in variability. Is that right?
You can say so. Actually NORPAX was the first big project that studied ocean–
atmosphere interaction. The database became sufficient to look at a larger picture—
that means how an ocean affects a continent.
Was Namias very important in this respect?
Of course, I had a very close relationship with Namias. When you ask for people:
there were of course Bjerknes and Namias. We were together very often in meetings
and had many long discussions.