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PREFACE
This special collection of articles is dedicated to Joseph Pedlosky, on the occasion of his 70th birthday. We take this opportunity to celebrate his extraordinary career in science and education, a career that has inspired two generations of scientists worldwide.
During his 40-year-long scientific life, Joe's pioneering work has greatly contributed to unifying meteorology and oceanography in what we now call “geophysical fluid dynamics.” Joe's contributions to the development of baroclinic instability, and especially its weakly nonlinear equilibration, remain cornerstones of our current understanding. The “ventilated thermocline” series of papers is Joe's paradigm-shifting contribution to physical oceanography. Starting with the paper coauthored by Luyten and
Stommel, and continuing with a series of single-authored works, Joe developed a new theory of the upper ocean circulation and its thermal structure. With a simple, elegant, and original model, Joe systematically used potential vorticity conservation to explain the structure of the subtropical wind gyres and of the equatorial undercurrent. As with all of Joe's work, the hallmark is a clear formulation of a physical problem solved with impeccable mathematics.
Joe's current research includes upwelling boundary layers in the ocean. This is a fundamental piece of the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) puzzle, an important but poorly understood feature of the Atlantic circulation. Together with Michael Spall, Joe is providing a fresh look at this difficult problem, using his considerable experience dating back to the famous Barcilon and Pedlosky (1967) paper (Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Vol. 29). His results to date show that the zonally averaged vertical flows occur in thin boundary layers confined to the east and west, and not as a broad flow as envisioned by classical theories. This finding has implications for the ocean diapycnal mixing required to account for the observed MOC transport.
Joe has also been a passionate educator of unparalleled devotion and success. For physical oceanographers and atmospheric dynamicists outside Woods Hole and MIT, Pedlosky is a set of three fundamental books. Worn out copies of his Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (now in its second edition) can be spotted on students' and researchers' desks in atmospheric and oceanic sciences departments worldwide. His General Circulation of the Ocean is an essential compendium of the modern theoretical framework for large-scale ocean flows. His latest effort, Waves in the Ocean and Atmosphere. Introduction to Wave Dynamics, has only just been published, and will undoubtedly follow its predecessors' success.
Joe's contribution to education through his books is unmatched in the ocean and atmosphere sciences: these books are essential manuals for theoreticians and dynamically oriented scientists in meteorology and oceanography; to this day, they are at the frontier of the discipline. In this sense, Joe's books are a scientific achievement beyond their uncontested educational value.
As a mentor and a teacher, Joe has educated two generations of scientists, endowing them with his deep physical insight, his principles of high academic achievement, his generosity of ideas, and his patient support. Above all, Joe has been a role model for how to be a devoted scientist and a responsible educator.
On this special occasion, his students, postdocs, and close colleagues gathered at Woods Hole to celebrate his birthday and extraordinary contributions. This special collection of articles for the Journal of Physical Oceanography is a dedication to Joe's remarkable career.
Paola Cessi
Scripps Institution of Oceanography/UCSD
Zhengyu Liu
University of Wisconsin—Madison
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