7. Heat Balance, Water Temperature, and Interpretations

The heat balance that determines the earth’s temperature represents an interesting and complex interplay between the sun, the earth, and our behaviour. The ocean plays many important roles in this, such as being the earth’s most important heat storage sink. Evaporation from the ocean surface due to latent heat flux works like a steam engine, driving large-scale atmospheric circulation. Long-wave radiation emitted from the earth’s surface is partly reflected back from the atmosphere by the GHGs that blanket the earth, protecting it from cooling. The human impact comes from anthropogenic landscape change and an increase in atmospheric GHG levels, for example, from fossil fuel burning, which influences the long-wave radiation reflected back to the surface. Today it is frighteningly clear that humans are influencing the ocean through global warming and ocean acidification. Will humans be able to reduce global warming or not? The ocean sends an image of a red jellyfish swimming slowly to the surface, illustrating the potential of humans’ internal resources, such as intuition, dreams, and emotions, to foster a more accurate perception of our relationship with the ocean, in all its beauty, that so strongly supports our survival.