80
Michael J. McPhaden
INTRODUCTION TO OCEANOGRAPHY
As a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the mid to late
1970s, the pursuit of tropical oceanography was for me a grand adventure. The field
of tropical ocean dynamics, stimulated by Townsend Cromwell’s discovery of the
Equatorial Undercurrent in the Pacific in 1952 (Cromwell et al., 1954), was still
young and largely uncharted. The community of physical oceanographers interested
in the tropics was small enough to know almost everybody by their first names.
People, events, and ideas influenced my research in ways I could never have
anticipated on entering graduate school in 1974. I still recall the excitement of reading
a preprint of Carl Wunsch and Adrian Gill’s paper on the observational verification
of 4- to 5-day-period equatorial inertia-gravity waves in the Pacific (Wunsch and
Gill, 1976). Equatorial inertia-gravity waves were expected from theory (Moore and
Philander, 1977) but until then had not yet been detected in the ocean. My initiation
into research began with a theoretical investigation of these waves in the presence
of mean flows like the Equatorial Undercurrent (McPhaden and Knox, 1979). I was
fortunate that Bob Knox, an observationally oriented tropical oceanographer, and
Myrl Hendershott, a theoretician, took an interest in supervising my research and
cochairing my Ph.D. committee.
Other important early influences on my early development included sharing an
office with fellow graduate student Jay McCreary who, in the process of completing his
Ph.D. dissertation (McCreary, 1976), exposed me to new and exciting ideas about El
Ni˜ no. The FGGE/INDEX/NORPAX
1 Equatorial (FINE) Workshop (Nova University,
1978), which brought together the leading equatorial theoreticians, modelers, and
observationalists for 6 weeks of lectures and discussions in the summer of 1977 at
Scripps, introduced me to Dennis Moore, Joel Picaut, Jim O’Brien, and many others
whose names I had recognized from the literature but had not met before. Dennis
Moore’s Equatorial Theoretical Panel meetings in the late 1970s and early 1980s
further nurtured my professional development by providing an informal but lively
forum for exchanging ideas with the community of scientists interested in tropical
ocean dynamics (see Chapter 7 in this volume). These meetings were rewarding not
only because of the science that was discussed, but also because of the sense of
collegiality they engendered and the lasting friendships they produced.
EL NI ˜
NO
Understanding the ocean’s role in El Ni˜ no and Southern Oscillation (ENSO) was
an emerging research theme in the 1970s. The Norwegian-born meteorologist Jacob
Bjerknes had recently identified the relationship between El Ni˜ no events and the
1 FGGE, First Global GARP Experiment; GARP, Global Atmospheric Research Program; INDEX, Indian
Ocean Experiment.
Michael J. McPhaden
INTRODUCTION TO OCEANOGRAPHY
As a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the mid to late
1970s, the pursuit of tropical oceanography was for me a grand adventure. The field
of tropical ocean dynamics, stimulated by Townsend Cromwell’s discovery of the
Equatorial Undercurrent in the Pacific in 1952 (Cromwell et al., 1954), was still
young and largely uncharted. The community of physical oceanographers interested
in the tropics was small enough to know almost everybody by their first names.
People, events, and ideas influenced my research in ways I could never have
anticipated on entering graduate school in 1974. I still recall the excitement of reading
a preprint of Carl Wunsch and Adrian Gill’s paper on the observational verification
of 4- to 5-day-period equatorial inertia-gravity waves in the Pacific (Wunsch and
Gill, 1976). Equatorial inertia-gravity waves were expected from theory (Moore and
Philander, 1977) but until then had not yet been detected in the ocean. My initiation
into research began with a theoretical investigation of these waves in the presence
of mean flows like the Equatorial Undercurrent (McPhaden and Knox, 1979). I was
fortunate that Bob Knox, an observationally oriented tropical oceanographer, and
Myrl Hendershott, a theoretician, took an interest in supervising my research and
cochairing my Ph.D. committee.
Other important early influences on my early development included sharing an
office with fellow graduate student Jay McCreary who, in the process of completing his
Ph.D. dissertation (McCreary, 1976), exposed me to new and exciting ideas about El
Ni˜ no. The FGGE/INDEX/NORPAX
1 Equatorial (FINE) Workshop (Nova University,
1978), which brought together the leading equatorial theoreticians, modelers, and
observationalists for 6 weeks of lectures and discussions in the summer of 1977 at
Scripps, introduced me to Dennis Moore, Joel Picaut, Jim O’Brien, and many others
whose names I had recognized from the literature but had not met before. Dennis
Moore’s Equatorial Theoretical Panel meetings in the late 1970s and early 1980s
further nurtured my professional development by providing an informal but lively
forum for exchanging ideas with the community of scientists interested in tropical
ocean dynamics (see Chapter 7 in this volume). These meetings were rewarding not
only because of the science that was discussed, but also because of the sense of
collegiality they engendered and the lasting friendships they produced.
EL NI ˜
NO
Understanding the ocean’s role in El Ni˜ no and Southern Oscillation (ENSO) was
an emerging research theme in the 1970s. The Norwegian-born meteorologist Jacob
Bjerknes had recently identified the relationship between El Ni˜ no events and the
1 FGGE, First Global GARP Experiment; GARP, Global Atmospheric Research Program; INDEX, Indian
Ocean Experiment.