Climate Trivia: Ocean vs. Atmosphere Heat Capacity
Even if the sun’s energy suddenly stopped, Earth would still give off heat for a while. This is because while much of the sun’s energy is reflected back into space, much of the energy that does reach the Earth is “stored” by the atmosphere, the oceans and the land. These bodies gradually release accumulated solar energy back into space in the form of long-wave or infrared radiation. The oceans are an especially complex energy storage system, with an elaborate network of currents that move heat from the surface to the depths and from the tropics to the poles. Water has a higher heat capacity than air, which means it takes far more energy to raise the temperature of a given volume of water than a given volume of air. One consequence of this higher heat capacity is that the oceans store more energy than the surrounding atmosphere.
Trivia Question: The ocean’s heat capacity is approximately how many times larger than that of the surrounding atmosphere?
a. Two times
b. Ten times
c. 100 times
d. 1000 times
The correct answer is d. The oceans hold about 1000 times as much heat as the atmosphere does. Over the past 50 years, the Earth has warmed. During this period, the oceans accumulated about 20 times the amount of heat the atmosphere accumulated.
(Source: Riebesell, U et al. “Sensitivities of marine carbon fluxes to ocean change.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 49 (2009): 20602-20609)