Heating the Ocean by 1°C Requires 32,000 Years of Global Power Output
“The ocean contains a colossal 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 litres of water! To heat it, even by a small amount, takes a staggering amount of energy. To heat it by a mere 1˚C, for example, an astonishing 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy are required. Let’s put this amount of energy in perspective. If we all turned off all our appliances and went and lived in caves, and then devoted every coal, nuclear, gas, hydro, wind and solar power plant to just heating the ocean, it would take a breathtaking 32,000 years just to heat the ocean by 1°C.”
Summary
The ocean holds about 1.4 × 10²⁴ liters of water, not 1.5 × 10²¹ liters. Heating the entire ocean by 1 °C requires roughly 5.5 × 10²⁴ joules, which aligns with the claimed 6 × 10²⁴ joules. However, using all global power generation would raise the ocean temperature by 1 °C in on the order of 9,000 years, far shorter than the asserted 32,000 years.
Sources 59 searched
- How Much Water is There on Earth? | U.S. Geological Survey
The volume of the largest sphere, representing all water on, in, and above the Earth, would be about 332,500,000 cubic miles (mi3) (1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers (km3)), and be about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers) in diameter.
- Specific Heat Capacity and Water | U.S. Geological Survey
Precisely, water has to absorb 4,184 Joules of heat (1 kilocalorie) for the temperature of one kilogram of water to increase 1°C. For comparison sake, it only takes 385 Joules of heat to raise 1 kilogram of copper 1°C.
- How much water is in the ocean?
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there are over 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers (332,519,000 cubic miles) of water on the planet. A cubic mile is the volume of a cube measuring one mile on each side.
- Ocean volume - The World Factbook
Skip to main content · Go to CIA.gov · WFBThe World Factbook · Field Listing · Ocean volume · 5 Results · Clear Filters · Filter · Arctic Ocean · Atlantic Ocean
- The role of the ocean in tempering global warming | NOAA Climate.gov
Making a rough approximation, assuming the specific heat capacity of sea water is about 3,900 Joules per kg per degrees Celsius and the total mass of the oceans is 1.4×1021kg this would mean that it would take 5.5×1024Joules (5.5 trillion trillion Joules) to heat the entire ocean by 1 degrees ...
- Climate Change: Ocean Heat Content | NOAA Climate.gov
More than 90 percent of the warming that has happened on Earth over the past 50 years has occurred in the ocean. Not all of that heating is detectable yet at the surface
- Evidence - NASA Science
The ocean has absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 100 meters (about 328 feet) of ocean showing warming of 0.67 degrees Fahrenheit (0.33 degrees Celsius) since 1969.6 Earth stores 90% of the extra energy in the ocean.
- Pacific Ocean Heat Content During the Past 10,000 Years | Science
Observed increases in ocean heat content (OHC) and temperature are robust indicators of global warming during the past several decades. We used high-resolution proxy records from sediment cores to extend these observations in the Pacific 10,000 years beyond the instrumental record. We show that water masses linked to North Pacific and Antarctic intermediate waters were warmer by 2.1 ± 0.4°C and 1.5 ± 0.4°C, respectively, during the middle Holocene Thermal Maximum than over the past century.
- 8A: Earth's Ocean: A Storage Unit for Heat
Thus, a liter (1000g) of water that increased from 24 to 25°C has absorbed 4.18 J/g°C x 1000g x 1°C or 4180 Joules of energy. For comparison, alcohol (ethanol) has a lower specific heat: it takes only 2.2 Joules of energy to increase the ...
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