Charles Curtis Ebbesmeyer

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Curtis C. Ebbesmeyer with plastic beach goods

Charles Curtis Ebbesmeyer (born April 24, 1943 in Los Angeles , California , USA ) is a retired American oceanographer . He researched ocean currents based on the movement of debris in the oceans.

He became known to the general public through his research on the 29,000 plastic toy ducks that were lost in the Pacific in 1992 . Some of these ducks have now reached Europe.

Life

He graduated from the University of Washington ; there he earned a doctorate in oceanography in 1973. Ebbesmeyer observes ocean currents with the help of floating buoys and floating debris. In May 1990, the cargo ship Hansa Carrier lost 80,000 Nike trainers from a container. He saw it as a good way of monitoring ocean currents and traced their way to the coasts of Oregon and Washington .

Ebbesmeyer founded a network of people who report on floating debris and other pollution on the coasts. Among other things, he also uses 34,000 ice hockey gloves that were lost from Hyundai Seattle in 1994 . To process this data, he uses the OSCURS (Ocean Surface Currents Simulation) program, a computer simulation program that was developed by the oceanographer Jim Ingraham . These observations helped him better predict the path of oil spills floating in seawater.

Ebbesmeyer founded the Beachcombers 'and Oceanographers' International Association, a charitable foundation in 1996 . He writes and publishes in Beachcombers' Alert magazine .

Although he is already retired, Ebbesmeyer continues to work on his research. In 1999 he published the results of a study together with oceanographer Charles Moore . This study states that the North Pacific's garbage vortex has a six-to-one ratio of plastic to plankton . That means that for every kilogram of plankton there are six kilograms of plastic waste in seawater. He also tried to calculate the resulting damage at the beginning of the food chain in ocean life.

bibliography

  • Akira Okubo, Curtis C. Ebbesmeyer, Jonathan M. Helseth: Determination of Lagrangian deformations from analysis of current followers. In: Journal of Physical Oceanography. Volume 6, 1976, pp. 524-527.
  • JC McWilliams, ED Brown, HL Bryden, CC Ebbesmeyer, BA Elliot, RH Heinmiller, B. Lien Hua, KD Leaman, EJ Lindstrom, JR Luyten, SE McDowell, W. Breckner Owens, H. Perkins, JF Price, L. Regier , SC Riser, HT Rossby, TB Sanford, CY Shen, BA Taft, JC Van Leer: The local dynamics of eddies in the Western North Atlantic. In: Allan R. Robinson (Ed.): Eddies in Marine Science. Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg 1983, pp. 92-113.
  • Akira Okubo, CC Ebbesmeyer, BG Sanderson: Lagrangian diffusion equation and its application to oceanic dispersion. In: Journal of the Oceanographical Society of Japan. Volume 39, 1983, pp. 259-266.
  • SC Riser, WB Owens, HT Rossby, CC Ebbesmeyer: The structure, dynamics, and origin of a small-scale lens of water in the western North Atlantic thermocline. In: Journal of Physical Oceanography. Volume 16, No. 3, 1986, pp. 572-590.
  • CC Ebbesmyer, RJ Stewart, S. Albertson .: Circulation in Southern Puget Sound's Finger Inlets: Hammersley, Totten, Budd, Eld, and Case Inlets. In: Proceedings of Puget Sound Research 1998 Conference, March 12-13, 1998. Puget Sound Water Quality Action Team, Olympia, WA 1998, pp. 239-258.
  • CC Ebbesmeyer, CA Coomes, GA Cannon, DE Bretschneider .: Linkage of ocean and fjord dynamics at decadal period. In: DH Peterson (Ed.): Climate Variability on the eastern Pacific and western North America. (= Geophys. Monogr. 55). At the. Geophys. Unio + n, 1989, pp. 399-417.
  • CC Ebbesmeyer, DR Cayan, DR Milan, FH Nichols, DH Peterson, KT Redmond: 1976 step in the Pacific climate: forty environmental changes between 1968–1975 and 1977–1984. In: Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Climate (PACLIM) Workshop April 1990. California Department of Water Resources, 1991.
  • C. Ebbesmeyer, R. Strickland: Oyster condition and climate: Evidence from Willapa Bay. NOAA Sea Grant Program Grant, grant # NA36RG0071, 1995, OCLC 39219692 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ebbesmeyer, Charles Curtis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American oceanographer
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Los Angeles , California , USA