(technical) How much energy would it take to warm the oceans by 1 degree Fahrenheit?

[Edena_of_Neith]

Heh. LOL!

Ok then, how long WOULD it take for an immortal mouse (of average mouse size, of course) to eat that teraton of cheese?

 

[Agback]

Sorry, Agback, but you might want to double check your specific heats. The specific heat of water is 4186 Joules per kg per Kelvin.

Okay. Rechecking my "Nuffield Advanced Sciences Book of Data" (ISBN 0 582 82672 1, page 123) I see that the figure for the "specific heat capacity" of water is given as 4.17, and that the units are "100 J g^-1 K^-1". Converting to SI units, that would make the heat capacity of water 417 000 J kg^-1 K^-1. {And that in turn would make the energy required to heat the upper 100 feet of the oceans by one Fahrenheit 2.2*10^24 J.}

So indeed I got something wrong, but re-checking doesn't produce a figure that agrees with yours. I am by no means convinced that I haven't made another mistake. Have I looked up the wrong figure?

Regards,


Agback

 

[Storminator]

Scientific projections show the Northwest Passage will be usable for 2 months out of the year, starting in 10 years.
The Northeast Passage will be usable for 3 months out of the year, in 10 years.
Somewhere between 30 and 100 years from now, the Arctic Ocean will be free of ice in the summer.

Scientific projections show a warming of about 8 degrees Fahrenheit worldwide over the next 100 years.
Since nearly all of the heat stored on Earth is stored in the oceans, this means the oceans must warm that 8 degrees Fahrenheit.
Thus, the oceans are projected to warm at nearly the rate of 1 degree per decade, from now on.
This, is a colossally fast rate of warming, by geological time frames.

Be leary of scientific projections. They are only as good as the predictive model. And given the difficulty of predicting the weather two days ahead, I'm not convinced we can do it a century out.

PS