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Physical Oceanography for the Year 2000 W. D. NOWLIN, JR. Oceanography is poised on the doorstep of an exciting era. The next 10 to 20 years should bring revolutionary increases in our understanding of the ocean and its interrelationship with the atmosphere. Physical oceanography seems destined to lead the field into this era. This is fitting and expected because knowledge and understanding of the physical processes are prerequisites to increased understanding of the biological, chemical, and geological processes that they affect. The technological and scientific developments of the last decades that have positioned oceanography on this threshold of new under- standing include the following: (1) increased understanding of the nature of ocean circulation and the sampling procedures necessary to observe it; (2) instrumentation for making long time series studies at any depth or in any environmental regime; (3) numerical ocean models and the high-capacity computers to use them; (4) improved methods for measuring hydrographic variables, including chemical tracers; (5) improved knowledge of the processes responsible for water mass formation and for diapycnal mixing within the interior of the ocean; (6) satellite technology capable of observing both the primary atmospheric forcing and the oceanic response; and (7) the means for obtaining improved ocean measurements from drifters and vessels of opportunity.
The International Decade of Ocean Exploration of the 1970s encouraged and financed many of these developments and provided the milieu in which oceanographers, regardless of institutional affilia- tion, could work in teams to study oceanic phenomena that would not yield their secrets to individual scientific assaults. The United States was the world leader in the International Decade of Ocean Exploration. In large measure due to that leadership and the farsighted federal bureaucrats of the 1960s who provided for the construction of the U.S. oceanographic research fleet, U.S. scientists remain at the forefront of oceanographic research. To maintain that position within the world scientific community, however, we must seize the opportunities offered by recent technical and scientific improvements. This requires identification of those programs that, because they are scientifically worthy and feasible, we wish to initiate, accelerate, or strengthen during the next 20 years. We must also identify those facilities, instruments, and human resources that are prerequisite to these programs. Four thrusts in physical oceanographic research are identified here. Two are large in scale and are related to the climate problem: the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) and the Interannual Variability of the Tropical Ocean and Global Atmosphere Experiment (TOGA). Another thrust is to better understand internal waves and microstructure, by which the ocean ultimately mixes mass and momentum. The fourth thrust focuses on the continental shelf and slope circulation, which is that part of the ocean most subject to development for recreation, food, and minerals.
In addition, it is important to continue emphasis on mesoscale process studies. It is well recognized by atmospheric climatologists that one of the primary mechanisms by which heat is transported pole- ward is the net statistical rectification of atmospheric storms. Mesoscale eddies in the ocean may play a similar role. Mesoscale features have received considerable study in MODE, POLYMODE, the Warm Core Ring Program, and in numerical modeling studies, but the pro- cesses and effects of these features are far from completely understood. While the mesoscale is an implicit part of WOCE, and global data sets describing ocean variability at the mesoscale will be accessible as a part of the experiment, mesoscale process studies per se are deserving of increased emphasis. Such processes are an important link between the large-scale, climatological pictures, and the small-scale dissipative processes. Additional support for these thrust areas must not undermine the U.S. program of individual research support for general physical oceanography (though many scientists now supported by that program will likely reorient their efforts toward one of these thrusts). It is the undirected, general oceanography program that has tradition- ally spawned the technical and scientific developments on which broad new programs can be based. The infrastructure needed to support the new thrusts, as well as the general research program, includes an ongoing program of ocean satellites, a program to replace and modernize the academic research fleet, continued funding for existing support groups (such as current meter, CTD, or chemistry), a technology development program focused
