NOAA’s Climate Change: Ocean Heat Content page provides a summary of the role the Ocean plays in Climate Change.
Heat absorbed by the ocean is moved from one place to another, but it doesn’t disappear. The heat energy eventually re-enters the rest of the Earth system by melting ice shelves, evaporating water, or directly reheating the atmosphere. Thus, heat energy in the ocean can warm the planet for decades after it was absorbed. If the ocean absorbs more heat than it releases, its heat content increases. Knowing how much heat energy the ocean absorbs and releases is essential for understanding and modeling global climate.
The page is dated July 2015, but the interactive graph and the data, used to create the graph here, is up to date. Connected to this is NOAA’s Hurricanes form over tropical oceans, where warm water and air interact to create these storms.
Recent studies have shown a link between ocean surface temperatures and tropical storm intensity – warmer waters fuel more energetic storms.
