The TOS Munk Award Lecture: The Imperative of Global Oceanography

Historically, physical oceanography has been an amalgam of sketchy global surveys, and intense local field programs. The result has been, and remains, considerable difficulty in quantifying changes in the ocean circulation and its properties over time-scales of decades and longer---precisely the intervals of most immediate concern in climate change. Numerous clever methods have been published intended to compensate for missing observations, but all are based upon statistical hypotheses that remain untestable owing to the same lack of data. In moving forward, so that future generations do not experience our own level of frustration, the question arises about how to quantify understanding of oceanic change. Among a number of possibilities, it is plausible that the ability to balance, within useful levels of uncertainty, global budgets of energy, freshwater, kinetic and potential energies, enthalpy, vorticity, is the zero-order measure of understanding of any system. Assuring that limited goal becomes possible requires an amalgam of basic science, infrastructure, developmental technologies, and scientific and political will.