Does Water Cooling Heat The Air?

[David H]

Trawling through the latest IPCC reports they refer to some warming going straight into the ocean without heating the air, and then being swept deep under the surface by the currents. When it finally cools will it then heat the air or does it just dissipate and not transfer the heat elsewhere?

[Old_Geezer]

If something finally cools then the heat energy will have transferred or converted into some other energy somehow somewhere.

I would suspect that if over a long period the oceans remain at a fairly stable temperature then heat will have transferred either to the ocean bed or the air. Probably the latter given that heat is supposed to rise.

[beso]

The atmosphere is relatively transparent to solar radiation so it travels through until it reaches the ocean where the water absorbs it very effectively. Much of it returns to the atmosphere quite quickly as latent heat of vaporisation in the water that evaporates.

Some heat is swept under by currents. This heat will be released into the air by the ocean when those deep warm currents eventually come back to the surface.

The heat can't just go away without raising the temperature of something else. Once the radiation comes through the atmosphere the only significant way it can get out again is by infrared radiation back out into space.

This is why the arguments about details of what happens to the heat on the Earth is really just "rearranging the deck chairs". An increase in CO2 reduces the amount of IR radiation back into space so as a whole the temperature of the planet inevitably increases when the CO2 increases.

Currently we are experiencing a lull in the rate of AGW temperature rise of the atmosphere largely due to Pacific equatorial currents pulling warm water under. Known cycles in the patterns of currents mean that in a few years time this water will come to the surface and that heat will be released to the atmosphere again. Then we will see a rate of atmospheric temperature rise above the projected average rise.

[Slapshot]

When people talk about upcurrents releasing heat please remember that many of these have rates of flow measured in HUNDREDS of years insomecases the oldest waters in these currents can be as much as 1000 years old, heat retention and loss can be related to these time periods as well

[David H]

Thanks everyone, I'll qualify my response in that Beso's theory is clearly official, but the extra qualification of the eventual end result is also important as we simply can't know the timescale here and if the oceans can retain heat hundreds of years or longer it shouldn't automatically be considered as a short term possibility. Also the heat of the deep ocean from volcanic vents etc is a vast temperature and must contribute as a constant source of internal heat eventually working its way out as well.

[beso]

As usual the doubter chooses to ignore the science in favour of their prejudice.