Climate Change Has Got The Earth In Hot Water

Climate Change, Anthropocene, & Associated Issues

Date posted: 09/01/15

Dr. Conca reports that it is understandable that people discussing global warming focus on air temperatures. Lower atmospheric temperatures are shown on the news and weather reports every day. We walk around in the air. We breathe it in. We talk about how hot it has been this summer, how warm last winter was, or how this is the hottest day on record. But global warming is all about water. Water, not the atmosphere, drives the weather, and drives climate. The atmosphere is mostly affected by the water on Earth, not the other way around. Atmospheric temperatures are volatile. Not so ocean temperatures. The oceans absorb a thousand times more heat than the atmosphere and hold 90% of the heat of global warming. Water temperatures change slowly, much slower than air temperatures, because there is so much more mass in a particular volume of water to heat than in a similar volume of air and that mass of water can hold so much more heat than can air. Which is why the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency annual State-of-the-Climate report is so chilling. The global-average sea surface temperature last year was the highest on record. The warmth was particularly notable in the North Pacific Ocean, the same region experiencing a drop in pH because of acidification from dissolved CO2 nothing to do with climate change, just increased CO2 concentrations forming carbonic acid in seawater.