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50 OCEANOGRAPHY IN THE NEXT DECADE 



an increase in the quality and the volume of data collected. Ac- 

 companying this change is a significant increase in each oceanog- 

 rapher's capacity to study ocean phenomena, an increase that raises 

 the costs for each oceanographer's science. As the cost per ocean- 

 ographer for scientific equipment and facilities has increased, the 

 field has responded with increased sharing of facilities, such as 

 ships and submersibles, and equipment, such as the new accelera- 

 tor mass spectrometer for carbon- 14 measurements. The develop- 

 ment and shared use of expensive facilities are likely to continue 

 in the future. Yet even with shared facilities, inflation-adjusted 

 research funding for the ocean sciences has remained nearly con- 

 stant over the past decade, while the number of Ph.D. -level aca- 

 demic oceanographers has increased by about 50 percent and soci- 

 etal pressures to predict man's effect on the ocean have also increased. 

 The growth in the scientific capacity of each investigator and the 

 number of qualified investigators, coupled with nearly constant 

 funding, has resulted in partial funding for some ocean research- 

 ers. 



Third, the resolution requirements of oceanographic models 

 and the complexity of model physics have always outstripped the 

 largest computational capability anywhere. As understanding of 

 the ocean becomes more sophisticated, more sophisticated mod- 

 els are required. The nurture of computational capability is re- 

 flected across the disciplines. 



Fourth, the understanding of the ocean and of the problems of 

 oceanographers has progressed so much in the past several de- 

 cades that all disciplines are now capable of new accomplish- 

 ments in a seemingly endless number of areas. The problem is 

 that the potential far exceeds the resources likely to be available, 

 and the difficult task of setting priorities within and across disci- 

 plines will be amplified. 



The foundation of knowledge about the ocean that is now 

 used in policy decisions was gained largely through Office of Na- 

 val Research (ONR) and NSF investments in basic research over 

 the past several decades. Yet the demand for quick answers to 

 purely practical questions sometimes obscures the need for in- 

 vesting in basic science, which remains the key to long-term practical 

 applications. Under pressure to provide immediate solutions, mission 

 agencies may be tempted to focus only on the short term. One 

 example of the importance of basic research is a 1961 study that 

 is now contributing to the debate about climate change — the question 

 of whether ocean circulation has two stable states. Both the geo- 

 logical record and numerical models suggest that, at some times 



