The. Advanced Research Inst i tute (ARI) on Dynamic Processes in the
Chemistry of the Upper OCean had its origins in discussions by the NATO
Special Programme Panel on Marine Sciences during 1978 when a wide range
of topics for future ARIs was being considered. What was then envisaged
was a workshop on chemical aspects of the oceanic mixed layer, at which
consider- ation would be given to the inputs, cycling and removal of
material, and the problems involved in the quantitative assessment of
fluxes. It was realised that any attempt to model chemical processes
would need the active collaboration of workers from other fields,
especially physical oceano- graphers concerned with air-sea interaction
and turbulence, and biological oceano raphers with expertise in primary
productivity and the cycling of particulate and dissolved organic
material. As plans for the ARI developed further a somewhat different
emphasis emerged, focused on the question as to how chemists should set
about observing an environment as variable and dynamic as the upper
ocean and selecting the appropriate scales for the framework of
measurements to study a particular process, especially in the light of
current knowledge of physical processes of transport and mixing. It was
plain that the capabil- ity of physical oceanographic methods to resolve
differences on small spatial and temporal scales is considerably ahead
of the capabilities of biologists and chemists who rely upon discrete
sampling and complex lab- oratory manipulations in order to obtain most
of their data.