PART IV — DYNAMICS OF THE ATMOSPHERE-OCEAN SYSTEM 



increasing upwelling and ocean-cool- 

 ing over an increasing area. 



A corresponding chain reaction can 

 he visualized for the phase of the 

 rhythm characterized by decreasing 

 easterly winds, decreasing upwelling, 

 and increasing equatorial ocean 

 warming. Hence, a slow vacillation 

 between the two extreme phases of 

 equatorial atmospheric circulation, 

 rather than a stable steady-state 

 equatorial circulation, becomes the 

 most likely pattern. 



Simulation experiments are pres- 

 ently being planned on a global basis, 

 encompassing both ocean and at- 

 mosphere; they will bring more pre- 

 cise reasoning into the explanation 

 of the equatorial air-sea rhythms 

 and, hopefully, into the interpretation 

 of their teleconnections outside the 

 tropics. Both the Princeton team, un- 

 der Smagorinsky, and the team at 

 the University of California, at Los 

 Angeles, under Mintz and Arakawa, 

 are progressing toward that goal. 



Requirements for Scientific 

 Activity 



Continued empirical study of the 

 tropical air-sea rhythms, in past and 

 in real-time records, should accom- 

 pany and support modeling efforts of 

 theoretical teams. The knowledge 

 gained on tropical air-sea rhythms 

 and their extratropical teleconnec- 

 tions so far rests on the study of 

 only a limited number of case his- 

 tories. Much more can be learned by 

 studying the whole sequence of years 

 1950-67, during which Canton Island 

 was available as an indicator of the 

 air-sea rhythms. These years include 

 the International Geophysical Year 

 period, which happened to exhibit 

 some extreme climatic anomalies and 

 also had better-than-normal global 

 data coverage. 



Such investigations are relatively 

 cheap. The main expense goes into 

 the plotting and analysis of world 

 maps of monthly climatic anomalies 



in several levels up to the tropopause. 

 Such a system of climatic anomaly 

 maps would be the empirical tool for 

 tracking the mechanism of the tele- 

 connections. Liaison with EASTRO- 

 PAC and other post-1950 Pacific 

 tropical oceanographic research would 

 become a natural outgrowth of the 

 "historical" study. 



The 1970's is to be the era of the 

 International Decade of Ocean Ex- 

 ploration (IDOE) as well as that 

 of the Global Atmospheric Research 

 Program (GARP). The study of trop- 

 ical air-sea rhythms belongs within 

 the scope of both of these worldwide 

 research enterprises and, indeed, will 

 serve to tie the two together. The 

 ultimate goal of IDOE-plus-GARP 

 should be to model the atmosphere 

 and the world oceans into one com- 

 prehensive system suitable for elec- 

 tronic integration. That endeavor 

 should produce meaningful progress 

 toward climatic forecasting by the 

 end of the 1970's. 



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