How is ocean temperature measured?

So the ocean absorbs a tremendous amount of heat from greenhouse gases.

And so about 90% of the heat caused by anthropogenic global warming has been absorbed by the oceans.

So when we say that they're warming, what we're saying is basically they're absorbing all of this extra energy caused by climate change and caused by the greenhouse effect.

So it's a really important thing to track because it means because, well, obviously the oceans are getting hotter, but also it's a really important buffer for lessening the effects of climate change on the land.

So is that the sea surface temperature or is it heat through the full depth of the ocean?

Both, sea surface temperature is really important to know about for weather patterns in particular, what the sea surface is doing is gonna have a really big influence on whether or not it's gonna rain or what the climate patterns in your region will be.

But also we know that the ocean, the full water column is heating up.

So going right down to the sea floor, sort of kilometers under the surface, we know that there's water heating up there as well.

And once it's heated up down there, it's gonna take a really, really long time to cool back to the levels that it was before um the industrial era so it's that's a really important thing to take note of as well

right okay so yeah one of our other podcasts that we've done in the series talked about how we've actually not noticed you know change you know kilometers deep in the ocean but yeah you're right you'd have to think that if it's that's just fascinating to think about it if it's so difficult to heat up then once it does heat up how does it actually cool down that must be frightening

Yeah, exactly.

And I think we talked on a previous podcast about the ocean sort of circulation, the current movements.

It can take hundreds, sometimes even thousands of years for a packet of water to move from, you know, sort of through the full world ocean.

So if that water has been heated up more, it's going to take thousands of years for it to kind of come out as well.

All right.

So why is the ocean heat content the key metric?

Well, for one, it's a fairly straightforward thing to measure.

Figuring out temperature is something that you can sort of compare across lots of different places.

But for another, that's the most obvious effect we have from climate change, from the greenhouse effect.

We know that there's more energy in the atmosphere and that's translating to more energy in the oceans and on the earth.

So heat's a really, really simple thing to track in that respect.