Ocean Variability and Green House Gas Emissions

It is possible to use ocean variability as a way of looking at the effect and scale of green house gas emissions and global warming. The ocean is essential important in the climate system, there are many small events such as El Nino and the Pacific decadal oscillation are defined as climate variability as opposed to climate change. Long term there are other processes like thermohaline circulation are essential in transferring heat by moving of water and redistributing the water in other oceans.

As the ocean is huge distributor of heat in the climatic system their interactions with other climatic factors and the atmosphere are very important in climate variability. They can impact by changing rainfall patterns, sea level, and marine ecosystems which can cause a knock on effect and cause much larges changes. Things like hurricanes or typhoons get energy from the heat in the ocean, climate change will cause them to grow both in number and intensity.

The number of mid-latitude winter storms are also affect by ocean variability and are predicted to increase just as hurricanes due to climate change. We also rely on the ocean to take up around 48% of fossil fuel emissions, experts however do not know how this will continue due to the effect we are having on ocean variability.