Upon his return from this long expedition exploring the shelf seas to the north of Siberia, he became the chair in meteorology at the University of Bergen.

[5] He was made director of California's Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1936, initially for three years but the intervention of World War II meant he held the post until 1948.

During 33 expeditions with the research vessel E. W. Scripps between 1938 and 1941, he produced a detailed oceanographic dataset off the coast of California.

In biological oceanography, his critical depth hypothesis (published in 1953) was a significant milestone in the explanation of spring blooms of phytoplankton.

His many publications include his magnum opus The Oceans: Their Physics, Chemistry and General Biology by Sverdrup, Martin W. Johnson and Richard H. Fleming (1942, new edition 1970) which formed the basic curriculum of oceanography for the next 40 years around the world.

[16] The Sverdrup Gold Medal Award was named in his honor by the American Meteorological Society.