ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses meteorology because oceanography and meteorology have much in common. Weather in turn interacts with the ocean and its processes. Understanding the oceans, like understanding the weather, requires a grand-scale view of vast dynamic happenings. Similar technology can be applied to the numerical modeling of the physical and biological systems in the ocean. Because of the complex interaction of many ocean processes, this is a particularly challenging task. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration have established the Oceanography and Marine Resources Program to apply high technology developments of the space program to the problems of the oceans and coastal zones. The oceanographer wants to better understand the dynamics and morphology of the ice fields by observing their formation and movements. A radar altimeter beams its pulses directly down from the spacecraft, along the nadir; timing the pulse return echos yields the altitude of the satellite above the radar-reflecting ocean surface.
