The Dance of Air and Sea: How Oceans, Weather and Life Link Together
The ocean covers more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and plays a major role in regulating the weather and climate of the planet. It seems unbelievable, then, that it has taken so long for climate scientists to factor in the dynamism of the ocean into their climate calculations.
But it’s not as easy as it sounds. As marine scientist Arnold Taylor makes clear, some of these interactions – such as El Nino – happen on a human timescale that is relatively easy to study. But others – such as the North Atlantic Oscillation, thought to affect amongst other things the rate at which Arctic ice melts – play out over centuries leaving our understanding of their hows and whys incomplete.
In spite of its lyrical title this is an academic book; some of the graphs are frankly baffling, though the glossary is very useful. Taylor does a thorough job of explaining the individual parts as well as how they interact. Indeed much of the narrative is stitched together using the example of microscopic crustaceans called copepods that are the basis of the oceanic food chain and whose numbers and territory fluctuate in rhythm with that of the Gulf Stream.
The text is also lifted somewhat by anecdotes and factoids, as well as tales of the terrier-like determination of the scientists trying to piece it all together.
Approach this book with a relaxed attitude to what you don’t know and you will learn a lot. You will also find yourself in good company since, as Taylor reveals, there is plenty that science still doesn’t know either. The ‘dance’ is complex, in some cases revealing itself one step at a time but, it seems, we ignore it at our peril.
The Dance of Air and Sea: How oceans, weather and life link together
Arnold H. Taylor
Oxford University Press
£16.99
- This review appeared in Geographical magazine circa July 2011.
