Question

True or False





Ocean water can store very little heat. This is why ocean currents can have a cooling effect on local climates

Answer 1

Oceans store vast amounts of heat energy.

Answer 2

Agreed. The oceans store and move a large amount of heat.

Answer 3

The specific heat capacity of water is 4.1855 J/gK, meaning it takes 4.1855 J to heat 1g of water (at 15C) by 1K.
The pacific ocean contains 70 million cubic miles of water. That's equivalent to
707.8*10^18 l of water.
At 1000g per l, that means in a temperature difference of 1K, the pacific ocean stores
4.185 * 1000 * 707.8*10^18 = 2.96*10^24J of energy.
1 J being equivalent to 2.77778 * 10^−4 Wh, that's 8.22 * 10 ^ 20 Wh, or 82,200,000,000,000,000 MWh. (82.2 quadrillion megawatthours).

In the month of Oct. 2006, the entire US produced about 57.5 million (57.5*10^6) MWh in all of its nuclear power plants. The pacific ocean therefore stores 1.49 × 10^13, or 14,900,000,000 (14.9 billion) times more energy in a single K of temperature difference than all nuclear power plants in the entire US produce in a month.
In other words, you could turn off all nuclear power plants in the US for a month by harvesting the energy from reducing the pacific ocean's temperature by only 14.9^-13 K.

That's a pretty massive amount of energy, I'd say ;)

Answer 4

That's supposed to be 14.9*10^-13 K at the end there.