If AGW is responsible for 1.6W/m^2 of retained energy how long will it take to raise ocean temperatures 1C?

Question

If AGW is responsible for 1.6W/m^2 of retained energy how long will it take to raise ocean temperatures 1C?

Answer 1

1.6 watt equals 1.6 joules per second which is the same as .38 calories.  1 calorie will increase 1 gram (1 cubic centimeter) of water in 1 second.  There is 1,000,000 grams of water in one cubic meter so it would take 2.63 million seconds to increase one cubic meter, roughly 30 days.  The average depth of the oceans is 3,796 meters, which works out to 316.5 years, give or take due to rounding.

Answer 2

yes, Noah did very well.

however, while i'm not sure about you, i don't live in the ocean.

water has the highest specific heat around, so just about everything else will warm considerably faster.

worse, that warming doesn't have to get disbursed 4000 ft down, so all the heat will stay right where i want to live.

and grow my food.

oh my, that could be cool.

we could harvest it already baked.

what a deal.

Answer 3

Noah did a great back of the envelope calculation.

But obviously the ocean would never warm up evenly from the top to the bottom (we currently see an 18+ C difference between the top 300M and parts below 1000M).  So in reality, we'd see surface temperatures increasing much more rapidly than we'd see in the deeper parts.  So one shouldn't make the mistaken assumption that we'll have to wait centuries before seeing surface warming that exceeds 1C.

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/e...