We All Live On The Coast
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A lot of people think that weather is shaped only by the skies above. But it's the oceans of the world that actually exert the greatest influence on how the sky behaves, even in Kansas. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow from the Mount Washington Observatory and this is The Weather Notebook. Dave Gallo knows about the oceans and about weather -- he's an oceanographer and he spoke to us at The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute on the Massachusetts coast:

DG: "Weather is in large part about moisture in the atmosphere. That moisture comes from the oceans. Our climate certainly is and our weather patterns are by and large driven by what's going on in the oceans."

That may seem difficult to grasp when the winds whip across the Kansas plains. But winds anywhere are mostly a result of what goes on in the ocean.

DG: "Those winds come from the differential heating of the earth, the way that the sun heats up the earth and it comes from heat - from the earth out - and most of that heat, 99% of it, is stored in the upper layers of the ocean. So, it's always going to come right back to the ocean again as being the heat engine for driving the big climate patterns."

These big climate patterns are also referred to as the earth's general circulation, the meandering rivers and currents of air that push around wind and weather systems, popularized recently by one of it's components - El Ni&tilden;o. If the ocean didn't exist well, the weather would be pretty much exactly the same, day in and day out. But it does exist:

DG: "And it's a place that controls our everyday lives regardless of where you live on the planet."

So, in terms of weather, we all live on the coast. The Weather Notebook is underwritten by Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive.