Introduction: A review of eastern tropical Pacific oceanography

摘要

The eastern tropical Pacific Ocean - the region west of Central and South America, between the tip of the Baja California Peninsula on the north and Peru on the south, and as far west as Hawaii (Fig. 1) - was sporadically explored by scientists from the early 19th through the mid-20th centuries. In the 1950s, scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography began a systematic study of the region, motivated by the burgeoning tuna fishery then based in San Diego. A young scientist named Klaus W.yrtki came to Scripps in 1961, after working in Indonesia during the 1950s and learning "the importance of past data and the importance of variability" (Wyrtki, 2002). Wyrtki compiled and synthesized the data and results of the Scripps researchers and published several summary papers on the oceanography of the eastern tropical Pacific (Wyrtki, 1964, 1965a,b, 1966, 1967). These reviews have been invaluable to researchers studying the oceanography and resources of the region. They give a broad summary of regional oceanography that has remained accurate and useful, even though based on limited observations.