He was survived by his wife, Erika; his son, Oliver; his daughter, Undine; and three grandchildren.
[8] In 2004, he was awarded the Alexander Agassiz Medal of the National Academy of Sciences "for fundamental contributions to the understanding of the oceanic general circulation of abyssal and thermocline waters and for providing the intellectual underpinning for our understanding of ENSO (El Niño)".
[9] H He also has been awarded the Rosenstiel Award from the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the University of Miami,[10] the Albert Defant Medal of the German Meteorological Society, and the Maurice Ewing Medal from the American Geophysical Union.
[1] According to friend and colleague Axel Timmermann, Wyrtki "was really one of the two or three greatest oceanographers of all time, I think.
Without him perhaps we wouldn't understand the effects of global warming on sea level tides.