How the Ocean is Regulating Global Warming

Greenhouse gases are not the only factors involved in global warming. The ocean plays a large part in the Earth’s climate. Global warming can affect many aspects of our weather from the amount of precipitation to disasters such as hurricanes. It is important to understand both how global warming works and what the ocean’s role in global warming is. 

Global warming means different things to different people. For the purpose of this paper, “global warming is the observed increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans in recent decades.” Although the average temperature may change due to natural factors, global warming in recent decades is believed to be connected to human activity. Burning fossil fuels, clearing land, agriculture, and many other human activities contribute to the increase of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere along with other greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases allow solar radiation to pass through the atmosphere, but prevent most of the outgoing radiation from escaping. While this process is essential to our survival, it can also be harmful. An increase in global temperatures has lead to a rising sea level, changes in the amount of precipitation, floods, droughts, heat waves, tornados, and hurricanes. A few of the consequences of our actions pertaining to global warming include glacier retreat, species extinction, lower agricultural yields, and an increase in disease vectors. 

The ocean plays many roles in global warming. The ocean can store energy as heat. Some of this heat is released as heat into the atmosphere and other energy is released as water vapor. The ocean covers over 70% of the Earth’s surface and is over 97% of the surface water. Being so large, the ocean has high temperature inertia. That is, the ocean is very resistant to change and is not going to change temperature quickly. However, that does not mean that we do not have to be careful about our greenhouse gas emissions. Even a minor change in the temperature of the ocean can have dramatic consequences.