The ocean is as important to the climate as the atmosphere
But only now is it beginning to be studied properly
For Homo sapiens, a dry-land species, discussions of the climate and how it is changing tend to revolve around what is going on in the atmosphere. This is a dangerously parochial attitude, for the atmosphere is but one of two fluid systems circulating above Earth’s solid surface. The other, the ocean, is in many ways the more important of the pair.
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This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Signals and noise”
From the March 11th 2023 edition
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