Waters of the World

by Sarah Dry

  55 Simpson Oral History, 14.

  56 Simpson Papers, MC 779, Simpson 3.10, Malkus-Riehl collaboration and Notebooks, 8–10, 10.

  57 Joanne Malkus and Herbert Riehl, “On the Dynamics and Energy Transformations in Steady-State Hurricanes,” Tellus 12, no. 1 (1960): 1–20; and Herbert Riehl and Joanne Malkus, “Some Aspects of Hurricane Daisy, 1958,” Tellus B 12, no. 2 (May 1961): 181–213.

  58 Simpson Papers, MC 779, Simpson 2.8, Scrapbook on clips, 1947–1973, “Head in clouds, mind on weather,” LA Times, 1961.

  59 Simpson Oral History, 11.

  60 Simpson Papers, MC 779, Simpson 3.12, Narrative The Miami Years, 1967–1974, 7; and Simpson Oral History, 15.

  61 Simpson Papers, MC 779, Simpson 3.12, Stormfury Cumulus Seeding Experiments—Joanne’s model tests, Narrative The Miami Years, 1967–1974.

  62 Simpson Papers, MC 779, Simpson 3.12, Decade of Weather Modification Experiments, 1964–1974, 8.

  63 Simpson Papers, MC 779, Simpson 3.12, Narrative The Miami Years, 1967–1974.

  64 Simpson Papers, MC 779, Simpson 3.12, Stormfury Cumulus Seeding Experiments—Joanne’s model tests, Narrative The Miami Years, 1967–1974, 9.

  65 “We are now able to perform actual experiments in a full-scale atmospheric laboratory in order to evolve and test various modification hypotheses.” From Robert Simpson and Joanne Malkus, “Experiments in Hurricane Modification,” Scientific American 211, no. 6 (1964): 37; and “Seeded Clouds ‘Explode,’” Science News-Letter 86, no. 8 (1964): 115.

  66 Simpson and Malkus, “Experiments,” 35.

  67 John Walsh, “Weather Modification: NAS Panel Report and New Program Approved by Congress Reveal Split on Policy,” Science 147, no. 3655 (15 January 1965): 276; and “Weather and Climate Modification: Report of the Special Commission on Weather Modification,” National Science Foundation and Advisory Committee on Weather Control, Final Report I, 1957.

  68 Cited in Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002), 910.

  69 Simpson Papers, MC 779, Simpson 3.12, Stormfury Cumulus Seeding Experiments—Joanne’s model tests, Narrative The Miami Years, 1967–1974, 9.

  70 NAS Report on Weather and Climate Modification—Problems and Prospects, NAS-NRC 1350 (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences–National Research Council, 1966), 6.

  71 NAS Report, 8.

  72 NAS Report, 9.

  73 NAS Report, 10.

  74 Simpson Papers, MC 779, Simpson 3.12, Stormfury Cumulus Seeding Experiments—Joanne’s model tests, Narrative The Miami Years, 1967–1974, 14.

  75 Simpson Papers, MC 779, Simpson 4.9, Banquet talk, 4 October 1989, Joanne Simpson, AMS President, “The Weather Modification Paradox Rises Again.”

  76 Simpson Papers, MC 779, Simpson 1.4, Simpson letter re: self-hypnosis for migraines, January 1996.

  77 Simpson Papers, MC 779, Simpson 2.10, Clippings, “Woman Cloud Expert Has Time for Family,” 2 May 1953, Boston Evening Globe. See also “Scientist with Her Feet on Cloud 9,” LA Times, 20 December 1963.

  78 “Woman Likes to Fly in Hurricane’s Eye,” Boston Globe, 1957.

  79 “It was then as it is now that no article is published on the work of a female scientists without the details of her spouse, children and home being part of it. That is just fine with me; it is too bad that it is done so rarely when the work of male scientists is discussed in the media.” Simpson Papers, MC 779, Simpson 210, Clippings “Beginning of a research career,” 2.

  80 Simpson Papers, MC 779, Simpson 1.14, Family history narrative, Personal memories January 1996 Re: difficult childhood, depression, referrals to photographs, 1 (unnumbered).

  CHAPTER 6

  1 George Veronis, “Henry Stommel,” Oceanus 35 (Special Issue, 1992): 5.

  2 Henry Stommel, “The Westward Intensification of Wind-Driven Ocean Currents,” Transactions AGU 29, no. 2 (April 1948): 202–206.

  3 Letter from Iselin to Stommel, 30 April 1950, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Papers of Henry Stommel, MC-6, Box 2, Correspondence, 1947–1954.

  4 Henry Stommel, Autobiography, I-8, in The Collected Works of Henry Stommel (Boston: American Meteorological Society, 1995).

  5 Stommel, Collected, I-9.

  6 For biographical information on Stommel, see Arnold Arons, “The Scientific Work of Henry Stommel,” in Evolution of Physical Oceanography: Scientific Surveys in Honor of Henry Stommel, ed. Bruce A. Warren and Carl Wunsch (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981); Carl Wunsch, “Henry Melson Stommel: September 27, 1920–January 17, 1992,” National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir 72 (1997): 331–350; and “A Tribute to Henry Stommel,” Oceanus 35 (Special Issue, 1992). See also Henry Stommel’s Autobiography in Collected Works.

  7 Henry Stommel, “Why We Are Oceanographers,” Oceanography 2, no. 2 (1989): 48–54.

  8 Henry Charnock, “Henry Stommel,” Oceanus 35 (Special Issue, 1992): 15–16.

  9 Oliver Ashford, Prophet or Professor: The Life and Work of Lewis Fry Richardson (Bristol: Adam Hilger, 1985), 82–83.

  10 Henry Stommel, “Response to the Award of the Ewing Medal, from AGU 1977,” Collected, I-205.

  11 L. F. Richardson, “The Supply of Energy from and to Atmospheric Eddies,” Proceedings of the Royal Society A97 (1920): 354–73.

  12 L. F. Richardson and Henry Stommel, “Note on Eddy Diffusion in the Sea,” Journal of Meteorology 5 (1948): 238–240.

  13 Margaret Deacon, Scientists and the Sea, 1650–1900: A Study of Marine Science (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 209.

  14 Eric Mills, The Fluid Envelope of Our Planet: How the Study of Ocean Currents Became a Science (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), chapter 2; and Deacon, Scientists, chapters 14 and 15.

  15 Mills, Fluid Envelope, 155–158.

  16 K. F. Bowden, “The Direct Measurement of Sub-Surface Currents,” Deep Sea Research 2 (1954): 3–47.

  17 B. Helland-Hansen and F. Nansen, The Norwegian Sea. Its Physical Oceanography Based upon the Norwegian Researches 1900–1904, Report on Norwegian Fishery and Marine Investigations, vol. 2, part 1 (Bergen: Fiskeridirektoratets, 1909).

  18 L. F. Richardson, Weather Prediction by Numerical Process (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 66.

  19 See, for example: “Once the problem is viewed as a global structural problem in which the Gulf Stream is a limb of a strongly asymmetric circulation cell the problem changes its characters permanently and profoundly. The Gulf Stream is now part of the general circulation of the ocean and not a geographic curiosity.” Joe Pedlosky, introduction to chapter 1 of Stommel, Collected Works, II-7.

  20 Philip Richardson, “WHOI and the Gulf Stream,” 2004, at https://www.whoi.edu/75th/book/whoi-richardson.pdf. For more biographical detail, see Jennifer Stone Gaines and Anne D. Halpin, “The Art, Music and Oceanography of Fritz Fuglister,” http://woodsholemuseum.org/oldpages/sprtsl/v25zn1-Fuglister.pdf; and “In Memoriam, Valentine Worthington,” http://www.whoi.edu/mr/obit/viewArticle.do?id=851&pid=851.

  21 F. C. Fuglister and L. V. Worthington, “Some Results of a Multiple Ship Survey of the Gulf Stream,” Tellus 3 (1951): 1–14.

  22 Henry Stommel, “Direct Measurement of Sub-Surface Currents,” Deep Sea Research 2, no. 4 (1953): 284–285.

  23 For biographical information on John Swallow, see Henry Charnock, “John Crossley Swallow, 11 October 1923–3 December 1994,” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 43 (November 1997): 514–519.

  24 Henry Stommel, “A Survey of Current Ocean Theory,” Deep Sea Research 4 (1957): 149–184.

  25 John Swallow, “Variable Currents in Mid-Ocean,” Oceanus 19 (Spring 1976): 18–25.

  26 J. C. Swallow and B. V. Hamon, “Some Measurements of Deep Currents in the Eastern North Atlantic,”
Deep-Sea Research 6 (1960): 155–168.

  27 J. C. Swallow, “Deep Currents in the Open Ocean,” Oceanus 7, no. 3 (1961): 2–8; and J. Crease, “Velocity Measurements in the Deep Water of the Western North Atlantic,” Journal of Geophysical Research 67 (1962): 3173–3176.

  28 Stommel notes in his autobiography that by 1950 it was well known that the dynamics of the atmosphere was not linear, and that the possibility of similar dynamics was “always in our minds,” but dynamical eddies had not been observed in the ocean until the Aries expedition. See Stommel, Autobiography, I-39; and Carl Wunsch, “Towards the World Ocean Circulation Experiment and a Bit of Aftermath,” in Physical Oceanography: Developments Since 1950, ed. Markus Jochum and Raghu Murthugudde (Berlin: Springer, 2006), 182.

  29 Henry Stommel, “Varieties of Oceanographic Experience,” Science 139, no. 3555 (15 February 1963): 575.

  30 From Memo of 11 August 1969, by Henry Stommel, Correspondence 1958, 1969–1970, in Mid-Ocean Dynamics Experiment, AC 42 Box 2, Folder 92, MIT Archives.

  31 From Memo of 11 August 1969, by Stommel.

  32 Stommel, Collected Works, I-64.

  33 Henry Stommel, “Future Prospects for Physical Oceanography,” Science 168 (26 June 1970): 1535.

  34 Stommel, “Varieties,” 572.

  35 For more on the Stommel diagram, see Tiffany Vance and Ronald Doel, “Graphical Methods and Cold War Scientific Practice: The Stommel Diagram’s Intriguing Journey from the Physical to the Biological Environmental Sciences,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 40, no. 1 (2010): 1–47. Stommel, “Varieties,” 575.

  36 They would eventually be joined in the effort by colleagues at Woods Hole, MIT, Harvard, Yale, AOML/NOAA, URI, JHU, Columbia, and Scripps.

  37 Stommel, “Future Prospects,” 1536.

  38 Jochum and Murthugudde, Physical Oceanography: Developments since 1950, 51.

  39 B. J. Thompson, J. Crease, and John Gould, “The Origins, Development and Conduct of WOCE,” in Ocean Circulation and Climate: Observing and Modelling the Global Ocean, ed. Gerold Siedler, John Church, and John Gould (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2001), 32.

  40 The Turbulent Ocean, Centre Films, 1974.

  41 Allen Hammond, “Physical Oceanography: Big Science, New Technology,” Science 185, no. 4147 (19 July 1976): 246–247.

  42 Hammond, “Physical Oceanography.”

  43 Stommel, “Why We Are Oceanographers,” 50.

  44 Henry Stommel, “Theoretical Physical Oceanography,” Collected, I-119.

  45 Francis Bretherton, “Reminiscences of MODE,” in Physical Oceanography: Developments since 1950, 26.

  46 Swallow, “Variable Currents,” 24.

  47 Peter Rhines, “Physics of Ocean Eddies,” Oceanus 19, no. 3 (1976): 31.

  48 Rhines, “Physics,” 35.

  49 The Role of the Ocean in Predicting Climate: A Report of Workshops Conducted by the Study Panel on Ocean Atmosphere Interaction, Under the Auspices of the Ocean Science Committee of the Ocean Affairs Board, Commission on Natural Resources, National Research Council, December 1974 (National Academy of Sciences: Washington, DC, 1974), vi.

  50 Stommel, Collected, I-217.

  51 Stommel, Collected, I-72.

  52 For a history of the development of CO2 measurements, see Maria Bohn, “Concentrating on CO2: The Scandinavian and Arctic Measurements,” Klima Osiris 26, no. 1 (2011): 165–179.

  53 The Role of the Ocean, 1.

  54 The Role of the Ocean, vi.

  55 Wunsch, “Towards,” 183.

  56 Erik Conway, “Drowning in Data: Satellite Oceanography and Information Overload in the Earth Sciences,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 37, no. 1 (2006): 134.

  57 Wunsch, “Towards,” 186–187.

  58 “It was obvious that numerical models of the ocean were about to outstrip any observational capability for testing them.” In Wunsch, “Towards,” 187.

  59 Geoff Holland and David Pugh, Troubled Waters: Ocean Science and Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 107–108.

  60 “The time was ripe to turn again to large-scale oceanography from the process studies which have dominated the attention of oceanographers in recent decades.” From foreword, John Mason and R. W. Stewart, vi, World Climate Research Programme, WOCE Scientific Steering Group, Scientific Plan for the World Ocean Circulation Experiment, WCRP Publications Series No. 6, WMO/TD-No. 122, July 1986.

  61 J. D. Woods, “The World Ocean Circulation Experiment,” Nature 314, no. 11 (April 1985): 509.

  62 Henry Stommel, “Numerical Models of Ocean Circulation,” in proceedings of a symposium held at Durham, NH, 17–20 October 1972, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, 1975, in Stommel, Collected, I-202.

  63 Woods, “The World,” 501.

  64 Walter Munk and Carl Wunsch, “Observing the Ocean in the 1990s,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 307 (1982): 440.

  65 Stommel, “Why We Are Oceanographers,” 52.

  66 Stommel, “Why We Are Oceanographers,” 54.

  67 Interview with Henry Stommel and Bill von Arx, 11 May 1989, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives.

  CHAPTER 7

  1 Many of the following biographical details come from Willi Dansgaard’s memoir Frozen Annals: Greenland Ice Cap Research (Odder, Denmark: Narayana Press, 2004).

  2 Willi Dansgaard, “The Abundance of 18O in Atmospheric Water and Water Vapour,” Tellus 5 (1953): 461–469.

  3 Willi Dansgaard, “The 18O Abundance in Fresh Water,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica 6 (1954): 259.

  4 Dansgaard, Frozen Annals, 16.

  5 Jamie Woodward, The Ice Age: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 85. See successive editions of James Geikie’s The Great Ice Age in 1874 and 1877 for evidence of one prominent theorist’s shift from a marine to a land ice theory of glaciation.

  6 W. B. Wright, The Quaternary Ice Age (London: Macmillan, 1937), 74.

  7 Cited in James Fleming, Historical Perspectives on Climate Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 53. For more on the changes in climate thinking, see Mattias Heymann, “The Evolution of Climate Ideas and Knowledge,” WIREs Climate Change 1, no. 1 (2010): 588.

  8 Cited in John Imbrie and Katherine Palmer Imbrie, Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 117.

  9 Dansgaard, “18O Abundance.”

  10 On the history of the WMO and for a brief review of previous attempts at international meteorology, see Paul Edwards, “Meteorology as Infrastructural Globalism,” Osiris 21 (2006): 229–250.

  11 On the history of the IAEA-WMO collaboration, see P. K. Aggarwal et al., “Global Hydrological Isotope Data and Data Networks,” in J. West, G. Bowen, T. Dawson, and K. Tu, eds., Isoscapes (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010), 33–50.

  12 Willi Dansgaard, “Stable Isotopes in Precipitation,” Tellus 16 (1964): 437.

  13 Roger Launius, James Fleming, and David DeVorkin, Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011); and Ronald Doel, Robert Marc Friedman, Julia Lajus, Sverker Sörlin, and Urban Wråkberg, “Strategic Arctic Science: National Interests in Building Natural Knowledge through the Cold War,” Journal of Historical Geography 44 (2014): 60–80.

  14 Cited in Janet Martin-Nielsen, “‘The Deepest and Most Rewarding Hole Ever Drilled: Ice Cores in the Cold War in Greenland,” Annals of Science 70 (2012): 56.

  15 On Camp Century and ice-core drilling, see Edmund Wright, “CRREL’s First 25 Years, 1961–1986” (CRREL, 1986), 1–65; Chester Langway Jr., The History of Early Polar Ice Cores (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2008); Martin-Nielsen, “‘The Deepest’”; and Kristian Nielsen, Henry Nielsen, and Janet Martin-Nielsen, “City under
the Ice: The Closed World of Camp Century in Cold War Culture,” Science as Culture 23 (2014): 443–464. The most extensive treatment of Dansgaard’s ice-core research is Maiken Llock, Klima, kold krig og iskener (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2006). For a contemporary description of Camp Century, see Walter Wager, Camp Century: City Under the Ice (Chilton Books, 1962).

  16 See James Fleming, The Callendar Effect: The Life and Work of Guy Stewart Callendar (1898–1964) (Boston: American Meteorological Society, Springer, 2007); and Ed Hawkins and Phil Jones, “On Increasing Global Temperatures: 75 Years after Callendar,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 139, no. 677 (2013): 1961–1963.

  17 For a full account of the events described in this paragraph, see Spencer Weart, “The Discovery of Global Warming,” https://history.aip.org/climate/; for a much-condensed version of this annually updated online resource, see The Discovery of Global Warming, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).

  18 Heymann, “The Evolution.”

  19 Roger Revelle, “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,” in Restoring the Quality of Our Environment: Report of the Environmental Pollution Panel, President’s Science Advisory Committee (White House, 1965), 127.

  20 Paul Edwards, “History of Climate Modeling,” WIREs Climate Change 2 (2011): 128–139.

  21 Sam Randalls, “History of the 2 Degree Climate Target,” WIREs Climate Change 1 (2010): 598–605.

  22 Paul Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 287–322.

  23 Mike Hulme, “Problems with Making and Governing Global Kinds of Knowledge,” Global Environmental Change 20, no. 4 (2010): 558–564.

  24 Janet Martin-Nielsen, “Ways of Knowing Climate: Hubert H. Lamb and Climate Research in the UK,” WIREs Climate Change 6, no. 5 (2015): 465–477.

  25 On the broader cultural history of forecasting in America, see Jamie Pietruska, Looking Forward: Prediction and Uncertainty in Modern America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).