ABSTRACT
The workings of the ocean have been too little considered in most texts on climatology. Though the thermal state of the ocean surface is the result of winds and weather controlling the water flow and radiation budget over some time previously, the heat stored and transported in the surface layer of the ocean — and the moisture given off and later condensed in clouds — introduce great regional anomalies in the heating of the overlying atmosphere, as we have seen in Chapter 2 (figs. 2.16, 2.17). The strong thermal gradients at the cold boundaries of the great warm ocean currents create strong horizontal differences in the heating of the air over those regions, thereby tending to concentrate the flow of the upper winds (and most effectively when these are in the same alignment as the ocean current boundary). Hence, quite small displacements of these current boundaries, and the corresponding anomalies of sea surface temperature in the regions affected, may, if they persist, have big effects on the vigour and steering of the atmospheric circulation overhead and developments in it downstream (see Chapter 10).
