What scuba divers know

In the last blog I showed a chart that indicates that the oceans of the world drive atmospheric temperatures.  I’m sure I will hear from people who tell me the opposite.  That the atmosphere determines the temperature of the oceans.

I have problems with this for two reasons:  I am a scuba diver and a regular lap swimmer.

As a scuba diver I had the opposite of an ‘out-of-body’ experience.  I had an ‘in-body’ experience.

The weight of the entire atmosphere above us, if viewed as a column of air, is the same weight as a column of water 32 feet high.  In the ocean, being down 32 ft. is called being at one atmosphere.  

If you are pulling up on a hose from a pool of water, you can close the top of the hose and lift it 32ft in the air before the hose will stop taking water with it.  That is the weight of the air pushing down on the pool of the water.

As a scuba diver in my first deep water training dive, I was taken down to about 35 ft. and told to disengage my breathing mask and exhale bubbles while I slowly swam to the surface.  I went up slowly, exhaling all the way.  I could not believe that air was still coming out of my lungs after 4 minutes.  I couldn’t believe it.

Of course my lungs had double the amount of air in them at 32ft. under water, so I was exhaling twice as much air as I would if I were just holding my breath and releasing on the surface.

As a swimmer I have been in many pools, some with incredibly high ceilings over the pool.  The one thing I can be certain of is that the air over the pool (water averaging only 6 feet deep) was always influenced by the pool temperature NEVER the reverse.  I’ve been in cool pools with hot air above them and vice versa.  I’ve never seen the air influence the temperature of the pool.

So, from my personal experience, I infer that the ocean temperatures of El Nino and La Nina influence the atmosphere but very unlikely the other way around.