ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of the oceans in nutrient cycling, maintaining the atmospheric system, and modulating climate change. How humans use and affect ocean resources is a consequence of the interconnected biological, chemical, physical and geological processes that move materials and energy between the crust, ocean and atmosphere. The climate changes have been so significant that geologists have named this period of time in which we live the "Anthropocene." The amount of change in a flux that must occur before a positive feedback leads to significant destabilization has been termed a "tipping point." The ocean and atmosphere are linked by processes that exchange heat and materials across the air–sea interface. Not all of the ocean–atmosphere–climate linkages are related to the Greenhouse Effect. For example, evidence suggests that a negative feedback stabilizing atmospheric temperature involves a biogenic gas, dimethylsulfoniopropionate, which is created by some marine phytoplankton.
