Talk:Walter Munk

ATOC

The newly added text here is not very well written and appears not to agree with the information in the relevant article. Reading the material here it sounds like (evil) "Green Peace" [sic] shut the experiment down, while the main article is much more equivocal and suggests that the investigation into ATOC's impacts found that they were minor (despite, as implied here, being stacked with whale-lovers). Perhaps if the newly added text had some sources we'd be able to judge its accuracy? --PLUMBAGO 14:12, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Having dug around a bit more, it transpires that, though initially stalled by concerns about cetaceans, the ATOC programme ran from 2002 until 2006 (and produced valuable data for climate change studies). Further, Munk and colleagues even had a big review paper on it just this year ...

Dushaw, B.D., Worcester, P.F., Munk, W.H., et al. (2009). A decade of acoustic thermometry in the North Pacific Ocean. J. Geophys. Res. 114, C07021, doi:10.1029/2008JC005124.

This suggests that the recent edits are factually questionable (let alone their tone, which is POV). I'll try to edit the text in the coming weeks to better conform to what actually happened with ATOC. Cheers, --PLUMBAGO 09:27, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I've not worked for the ATOC project since 1995. The project to which your refer is NPAL, in the North Pacific, http://npal.ucsd.edu/thermometry/index.htm. The permits allowed a single transmission every 4 days. They were using the same 75Hz source as the original ATOC. As far as being factually correct ... well after reading the crap in the Carl Wunsch biography section I'm simply NOT bothering with crappipedia any more. Do what u like. Ketabatic (talk) 05:03, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. Cheers, --PLUMBAGO 08:27, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I might be a bit too close to this material (conflict of interest), but I've removed paragraphs that were just rather erroneous/inappropriate. It would be quite a bit of work to correct, and it seemed to me that material was a little off the point for this biography. There is a sordid story to tell wrt Munk and the marine mammal people - but I know of no reference that tells it (a paper by John Potter comes to mind [1]). There is a wikilink to ATOC that seems sufficient; accurate, referenced edits there might be more appropriate. NPAL was indeed the successor to ATOC; the two are not unrelated. There are errors throughout wikipedia to be sure, but we strive to work collectively to achieve nonPOV accuracy, however unattainable that may be... And the Wunsch article is indeed rather awful. Bdushaw (talk) 14:42, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Excellent. I think the material that you've deleted was that added by Ketabatic, and that which I was questioning. The sources I subsequently read (including one by a familiar-sounding B.D. Dushaw) pointed to this material being inaccurate, on top of its inappropriate tone. Anyway, glad to have this cleared up. While the article is still less than satisfactory, it's a lot better. Thanks. --PLUMBAGO 14:59, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

The article needs to be cleaned up regarding the interchangeable use of the terms tomography and thermometry. Ocean tomography experiments were begun in the 1950s, by such people as George Veronis. The Heard Is experiment did not involve 2D deconvolution of multiple sound sources. The T in ATOC is "Thermometry". The OAT book is a general treatise on ocean acoustic tomography, and is not specifically about ATOC. The edition was also edited and peer-reviewed by a large group, so it's a bit more authoritative than a simple book. I have added a bit about the ATOC experiment. Unfortunately the original technical docs relating to duty cycles and transmit powers have long been hidden away by the institutions involved. Munk gave many public talks on ATOC during the 90s and my figures have been taken from there. You may be able to glean these figures from the ATO edition. Plumbago, I might be so bold as to suggest that if you did not attend one of these presentations you probably should not be commenting about ATOC!220.244.75.163 (talk) 02:15, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I have reverted the recent edit by this author. As I noted, the edits do not appear to be neutral (a political agenda is evident), are off topic (Munk has nothing to do with wind turbines), and certainly require supporting references. The comments above do not seem at all correct to me. As always, supporting references are required, particularly for a biography of a living person. (A recollected talk by Munk does not meet this standard.) Bdushaw (talk) 09:29, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Shutdown of ATOC

HIFT and ATOC were shutdown circa 1992. Green Peace kicked up a stink when one of their geniuses did not understand the the various dB scales used in acoustics. Fed Govt of Australia withdrew its participation, and would not allow Heard Is. to be used. The present Hawaiian "Line" experiments are very limited. The project was under the ownership of the US Navy, as the receivers are still classified. After the media outcry/lunacy, the Navy quashed/hid most of the technical reports. Only one brief reference of this history exists, in a Master's thesis online at MIT.220.244.246.49 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:02, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

New URL for "Crafoord Prize Lecture 2010: The sound of climate change"

http://www.crafoordprize.se/events/crafoorddays2010.4.5ce3bd8012d79a5929580004998.html Would someone who can edit please fix? --Spoofed IP 173.161.195.122 (talk) 17:49, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Fluid dynamics 101

There' a bit of humbug in the article about "Stagnating Oceans", although the term is not actually used. Fluid Dynamics 101: a stratified fluid in a 3D irregular domain cannot be at rest, since the diffusion and hydrostatic boundary conditions are in conflict. More importantly, the latitudinal differential heating will always keep the ocean in motion, even in the complete absence of an atmosphere. This stagnation nonsense has been invented twits trying to explain the the carbon "death" layer.

Munk's inviscid solution is not the only non-stable solution. Any non-linear treatment of turbulent viscosity will yield a non-steady solution. Any sort of Del^2n viscosity has a stable solution and finite scaling width.220.244.246.49 (talk)

Spiesberger narrative

The latest additions relating the Spiesberger measurements are not quite appropriate. This is a biography of Munk, not Spiesberger. Munk's long-time collaborator Worcester has been deleted. An ONR contract is not a valid Wikipedia reference. The Heard Island signals were not unstable, it was just nine days of data from a moving ship. I know the origins of these POVs, however, and I contemplate how to restore the text that was there before, while acknowledging Spiesberger's contributions. Bdushaw (talk) 21:00, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

I've moved the Spiesberger material over to the article on ocean acoustic tomography where it is better suited. The "Main article" link should encourage readers to go there. I note that Spiesberger was Munk's student (or of that group anyways). Bdushaw (talk) 21:40, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Ocean tomography was first investigated by George Veronis in the early 50s. (In fact when going out west to use ENIAC, the light plane he charted crashed.) Veronis was also the fist civilian given access to the North Atlantic array. Wunsch and Munk invented the ATOC Thermometry project in the mid 70s. (In fact, they sat down in Walker Hall and drank coffee all afternoon while coming up with the idea.) Note that the SOFAR channel was know to various militaries from WW1 onwards, but SOFAR did not become widely known until after WW2. I have changed Tomography in ATOC to Thermometry. Their book is called "Ocean Acoustic Tomography".27.33.243.64 (talk) 03:06, 14 December 2015 (UTC)