The explosion of interest, effort, and information about the ocean since about 1950 has produced many thousand scientific articles and many hun dred books. In fact, the outpouring has been so large that authors have been unable to read much of what has been published, so they have tended to concentrate their own work within smaller and smaller subfields of oceanog raphy. Summaries of information published in books have taken two main paths. One is the grouping of separately authored chapters into symposia type books, with their inevitable overlaps and gaps between chapters. The other is production of lightly researched books containing drawings and tables from previous pUblications, with due credit given but showing assem bly-line writing with little penetration of the unknown. Only a few books have combined new and previous data and thoughts into new maps and syntheses that relate the contributions of observed biological, chemical, geological, and physical processes to solve broad problems associated with the shape, composition, and history of the oceans. Such a broad synthesis is the objective of this book, in which we tried to bring together many of the pieces of research that were deemed to be of manageable size by their originators. The composite may form a sort of plateau above which later studies can rise, possibly benefited by our assem bly of data in the form of new maps and figures.

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the five oceans. This S-shaped ocean lies between the continents of North America and South America to the west, and Europe and Africa to the east. The Atlantic Ocean covers about one-fifth of Earth’s surface. The Our Five Oceans series features stunning visuals, detailed maps, educational debates, and challenging research activities. Each book explores key topics such as ocean life, ecosystems, and environmental issues, in order to help readers better understand the importance of protecting the world’s oceans.

The research is described under four headings as follows: North Atlantic Circulation, The Distribution of Properties, Air/Sea Interaction, and Geological Studies. In the study of North Atlantic circulation, considerable emphasis has been placed on tracking the movements and decays of cyclonic eddies formed by detached segments of the Gulf Stream, the volume transport of the Stream, moored ocean array experiments, and the analysis of direct current measurements. The coastal and sedimentary geology studies were concluded 31 December 1966.