Modeling Ocean Circulation
31
circulation models (OGCMs), recognizing that the maturity of ocean models is still
some time off, perhaps in the middle decades of the twenty-first century.
THE 1960s: THE BIRTH OF OGCMs
Smagorinsky’s group had already been in existence four years when I received an
invitation in 1960 to leave Woods Hole and join his group at the Weather Bureau. From
its inception “Smag’s laboratory” got extraordinary support from an organization
famous at that time for its parsimony. The chief of the Weather Bureau, Francis
Reichelderfer, and his deputy, Harry Wexler, took a personal interest in what we were
doing. Top-of-the-line computers were expensive, and our lab was privileged to have
the best available, while many of the Bureau’s personnel worked away in ancient
offices in an advanced state of decay. In the first year I shared a crowded office with
Syukuru Manabe (Figure 3.2) and Douglas Lilly. At lunch hour all the desks were
pushed together to make a ping-pong table. It was a very stimulating environment,
despite the drab “government issue” office buildings. Ideas bounced back and forth
like the ping-pong balls at lunchtime. My task was to build an ocean model that could
eventually be coupled to the atmospheric model under construction by other members
of the group. I was totally ignorant of the numerical methods needed to make an ocean
Figure 3.2. Syukuru (“Suki”) Manabe and the author at the Weather Bureau’s General Circulation
Laboratory (later the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton). A collaboration in
building ocean–atmosphere models began in the 1960s and continued for nearly 30 years. Photo taken
around 1965
31
circulation models (OGCMs), recognizing that the maturity of ocean models is still
some time off, perhaps in the middle decades of the twenty-first century.
THE 1960s: THE BIRTH OF OGCMs
Smagorinsky’s group had already been in existence four years when I received an
invitation in 1960 to leave Woods Hole and join his group at the Weather Bureau. From
its inception “Smag’s laboratory” got extraordinary support from an organization
famous at that time for its parsimony. The chief of the Weather Bureau, Francis
Reichelderfer, and his deputy, Harry Wexler, took a personal interest in what we were
doing. Top-of-the-line computers were expensive, and our lab was privileged to have
the best available, while many of the Bureau’s personnel worked away in ancient
offices in an advanced state of decay. In the first year I shared a crowded office with
Syukuru Manabe (Figure 3.2) and Douglas Lilly. At lunch hour all the desks were
pushed together to make a ping-pong table. It was a very stimulating environment,
despite the drab “government issue” office buildings. Ideas bounced back and forth
like the ping-pong balls at lunchtime. My task was to build an ocean model that could
eventually be coupled to the atmospheric model under construction by other members
of the group. I was totally ignorant of the numerical methods needed to make an ocean
Figure 3.2. Syukuru (“Suki”) Manabe and the author at the Weather Bureau’s General Circulation
Laboratory (later the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton). A collaboration in
building ocean–atmosphere models began in the 1960s and continued for nearly 30 years. Photo taken
around 1965