Do changes in sea temperature determine global climate more than the air impacts the sea, or vice versa?

Question

Do changes in sea temperature determine global climate more than the air impacts the sea, or vice versa?

Answer 1

Roger Pielke, one of the most highly cited and respected climatologists, promotes ocean heat content as a better metric than surface temperature of land and ocean.  

Land surface temp record has a significant warm (and warming) bias. See http://surfacestations.org for more info on that.  Sea surface temps have their own warming biases because of changes instruments.

Ocean heat content is being measured now by the Argo Network.  Some of the ocean heat is forced downward, deeper into the ocean by ocean currents and convection.  The Argo Network provides high quality data of ocean heat down to 2 km.  Most of the ocean's heat is trapped in the first 100 feet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_%28oce...

Answer 2

yes, warm water make everybody go swimming, take away swimming and no more global warming

Answer 3

The air actually absorbs very little of the suns energy and most of that is radiated back into space.  That is why it is so cold at 40,000 feet.

Water covers 70% of the earths surface, so it is the biggest factor. Surface tempature is the main impact on air tempature below 30,000 feet.  The warmer the water, the more it evaporates, the more clouds are produced, impacting air tempatures even more.

Answer 4

Sea temperature is the engine of global climate since it infuses the over water atmousphere with energy.  Since the planet is predominately covered with water, this naturally has a profound effect.

Answer 5

sub-marine volcanos are heating the oceans which melts the ice, so maybe

Answer 6

The sea is approx 5km deep (on average) and it tends to mix itself.  The land is solid (with no mixing).  Oceans are also made of water which has a higher specific heat than most solids (ie it takes more energy to heat up water than most solids).

The result of all that is that land heats up and cools down much more quickly than oceans.  It would take many centuries for the oceans to warm in response to a change in external conditions, but the land can be made to warm in a much shorter period of time.

Answer 7

Tsunamis?????? Why not throw in volcanoes and earthquakes??

In response to the question...yes the water temperature does influence climate as it is a more dynamic body than the atmosphere. The ocean carries warm and cold currents thousands of miles without much temperature change due to its greater density. Air cannot manage this and relies on the sea for its heat.

Answer 8

The hotter the sea or ocean is the more likely you get hurricanes or tsunamis or cyclones etc. This is because they result from warmer water. The warmer the worse.

Answer 9

The two are linked, increases in sea surface temperatures in the past half century are about half that of the increase in mean land surface air temperature. (It takes longer for the seas to gain heat and warm up than land. Land also loses heat faster than the seas, this is why coastal areas often have fogs due to the difference in temperatures.)

Any extra warmth causes more water vapour to evaporate from the oceans, and this traps more heat, intensifying the greenhouse effect. At the same time, the spectrum of the outgoing radiation changes as the surface warms. This means that as the surface and oceans warm, proportionately more heat is trapped.

Warmer sea waters also absorb less CO2 leaving more in the atmosphere for longer. (Refer to the carbon cycle to understand how CO2 is reabsorbed from the atmosphere.)

http://www.gdrc.org/oceans/fsheet-02.htm...

Its also worth noting that cold seawater can hold more dissolved oxygen than warm seawater, this promotes a richer variety of life. Nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen are discharged from rivers into the seas where they fertilise tiny plants called phytoplankton. These are eaten by zooplankton, which in turn are eaten by larger creatures and so on up the food chain. It is this rich soup of microscopic plants and animals that make cold seas appear murky. The richest fishing grounds are all in regions where cold water from the deep ocean rises up (upwells) to the surface. Warm tropical seas are so clear simply because there is so little life in the water. Corals are adapted to these nutrient-poor environments, so a few coral reefs account for much of the diversity of life in a tropical sea. A warmer sea means less overall life inhabiting it.