The World Ocean undergoes constant change over a range of time scales and via physical processes such as waves, tides, eddies, and currents. Historically, physical oceanographers sought to analyze oceanic flows by measuring the velocity of currents either at a fixed location (the so-called “Eulerian” representation) or by tracing objects as they move along the ocean’s surface (“drifters”), or at depth (“floaters”). In the 1910s, for example, Lewis Fry Richardson famously tossed pieces of parsnips onto the Holy Loch in Scotland in order to follow their “relative motion” on the water’s surface. This direct method of measurement ran concurrently with indirect means of measuring fluidic pressure, temperature, and salinity—by way of the “dynamic method,” which researchers developed in Norway in the early twentieth century.
While both approaches remain fundamental in the study of oceanic flows, these in situ measurements are time-consuming and expensive to execute, especially because the ocean’s depth limits the capabilities of sensing devices, like satellites, to observe below the ocean’s surface. Yet, nature is difficult to understand and predict without recourse to representation—mathematical, physical, or visual. Richardson’s improvisational model of floating parsnips is but one instantiation of historic mathematical theories of dynamic systems that continue to inform the visualization of flows. Today, computational models of the ocean generate a new set of visual imagery, ranging from simple illustrations to complex topographic maps of dynamic height, Hovmöller diagrams, water mass distributions, and basin cross-sections of temperature, salinity, and other properties. One pervasive example is the Global Ocean Conveyor Belt, a widely circulated illustration of the ongoing distribution of heat and moisture through the oceans that might be best described as a cartoon.
At the center of our research is the documentation of flow visualization at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, from the controlled systems of laboratory experimentation to predictive computational modeling of the World Ocean as a dynamic system of matter. Engaging the visual history of computational research at Scripps, “Oceanic Flows” focuses on a unique range of visual representation that emerges in the absence of data-rich images of large-scale fluidic motion. We explore how the epistemic flow of scientific visualization shifts away from the direct observation of nature towards the production of a new class of images, which capture the physical models of the ocean’s dynamic processes. Our research draws from historic photographs, graphics, and documents from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives and Geisel Library Special Collections; physical models of fluid motion, including the research of oceanographer Walter Munk (1917–2019) on surface and internal waves and the more recent collaborative Office of Naval Research project Ocean 3D + 1 (2011–2016) on the mathematical modeling of ocean fronts, jets, and eddies. Contemporary French artist Anaïs Tondeur’s artistic research on oceanic flows will complement our discussion of epistemic regimes of the visual.
Background image: Digital rendering of “Upper Ocean Fronts” produced by Ocean 3D+1 model, Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, https://www2.whoi.edu/site/ocean3d/
