Global Warming - Marine and Antartic Science
Planet Earth or Planet Ocean?
70% of the earth’s surface is covered by water. There’s been life in the oceans for about 3.45 billion years longer than there has been on the land.

The oceans determine, to a vast degree the patterns of global and regional climate. The Oceans are the driving force of our weather and climate.
Climate is what we expect. Weather is what we get.
Climate change is affecting the temperature of the oceans. The composition of the atmosphere of earth is changing, and this is due to humans releasing a range of different greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The primary one being carbon dioxide. Two other important greenhouse gases are methane and nitrous oxide. …show more content…
And for Nitrous Oxide it’s about 100 years or so.
Another critical property is the global warming potential, measured against the warming potential of carbon dioxide, is just 1, about 21 for methane and about 300 for nitrous oxide. Just 1 kilogram of methane has 21 times more warming effect than carbon dioxide, while nitrous oxide has 300 times more.
But carbon dioxide is still so much more important as there is so much of it and it lasts for many, many years. As the water warms, it expands which then causes sea level rise. Since 1900 there’s already been a 20-centimetre rise and is expected to be about 1 metre by the year 2100 with ocean temperatures rising by 2-degrees.
A 2-degree rise doesn’t seem that much, but for the ocean, it is a lot, which will more than likely bring warmer weather to us, and extreme events are much more liable to