In 1991, Wyrtki was awarded the
Sverdrup Gold Medal Award by the
American Meteorological Society, for "outstanding contributions to the dynamics of ocean currents, especially the
Gulf Stream". In 2003, Wyrtki was awarded the
Prince Albert I Medal. 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)". H He also has been awarded the Rosenstiel Award from the
Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the
University of Miami, the Albert Defant Medal of the German Meteorological Society, and the
Maurice Ewing Medal from the
American Geophysical Union. In 2007, he was elected a
Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts & Sciences. A
research vessel at the University of Hawaiʻi is named in his honor. 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 we wouldn't do El Nino forecasting on a regular basis. Without him perhaps we wouldn't understand the effects of global warming on sea level tides. He made some amazing contributions to science and society." ==References==