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Evolution of Physical Oceanography.pdf

October 12, 2009 · Filed Under Oceanography · Comment  · Tags: ,

Taken from Introduction: We have tried to tie the individual chapters together in a variety of ways. The book includes a general index of subjects and names, and also a reference list that gives the page number for each citation in the text. We hope that these features will make possible a rapid’ entry into the book by anyone seeking a discussion of a particular piece of work. Special care was taken in compiling the reference list to correct many common miscitations, some of which extend back nearly 100 years. The reader will notice overlap between chapters and even some dispute among them. We regard this as inevitable and healthy in a field undergoing the ferment of active progress. A consequence of this activity is that we did not attempt to impose a common notation upon the book, but we did ask the authors to avoid idiosyncratic schemes.
In the context of the question to the authors posed above, we are impressed in reading these chapters with how far we have come. When Henry Stommel entered physical oceanography in the early 1940s, the three authors of The Oceans, H. U. Sverdrup, Martin W.
Johnson, and Richard H. Fleming, could cover authoritatively, in one volume, the entirety of oceanography-physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. Today no single volume could cover one of these fields, and probably no three authors would have the temerity to attempt comprehensive descriptions of any. But we believe that the reader will find here a broad description of the present state and the historical evolution of physical oceanography.

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