Physical Oceanography: The Shift to a Global View and Its Changing Culture

Abstract

Many changes took place in physical oceanography over the last 60 years, as the science encountered the global‐scale problems of climate and in the availability of numerous new technologies. Changes have been in the known science, and in the intellectual culture in which it is pursued.As the importance of understanding the ocean as a globally varying fluid and its influence on the climate system became obvious, the oceanographic community attempting to understand its physics exploited many new technologies that became available—beginning about 1970. These technologies, which included satellites, autonomous floats, and many other instruments, powerful computers, as well as greatly improved communication methods, radically changed both the culture of the science, and led to a science necessarily grappling with an enormous turbulent system. We know much more now, but the role of individual scientists is much reduced in favor of team efforts. Physical oceanography became global, beyond mere geography, over the past 60 years Crucial to the changes were the rise of climate problems, and the development of radically new observational technologies, communication systems, and computers The changed science is far more mathematically oriented, and often requires large teams of investigators, mostly with highly specialized knowledge, as compared to the earlier generalists