It’s easy to get climate change and destruction of the ozone layer confused, but they’re actually two different things.
Climate change is caused by a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These gases have the ability to trap heat – to prevent it leaving Earth and escaping into space. Our industrial lifestyles are producing more and more of these gases, the layer of greenhouse gases is getting thicker, more heat is being retained in the atmosphere and the result is global warming.
On the other hand, ozone gas forms a layer in the atmosphere some 25km (15 miles) above Earth. This layer filters out almost all the harmful ultraviolet rays that are in sunlight and prevents them reaching Earth and the lifeforms on it. The ozone layer can be destroyed by what are termed ozone depleting substances or ODS’s.
Many of the manmade gases such as chlorofluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons cause damage to the ozone layer. Nowadays many of these substances are banned and the ozone layer is slowly repairing itself.
A lot of the ODS’s are also greenhouse gases – not only do they destroy ozone but they cause global warming as well. But the amount of warming they cause compared to other greenhouse gases (ones that don’t damage the ozone layer) is very small at about 1% of all the warming.
As to the question of how warm water affects our climate…
The seas and oceans contain vast amounts of heat energy, so too does the atmosphere. There is a continual exchange of heat between the air and the water. Because heat always flows from the hot medium to the cold one, if the atmosphere is warmer than the ocean, then the air warms the water, conversely, if the ocean is warmer the heat moves from the water to the air.
As more and more greenhouse gases trap more heat in the atmosphere, some of that heat is transferred into the oceans causing them to warm up; there are several consequences of this, here’s six:
? As the oceans warm they expand, this is causing sea-levels to rise by 1.6mm a year. There are other factors that cause the sea level to rise and each year the overall rise is 3.2mm.
? Because there is more heat energy in the ocean-atmosphere system it means that water can evaporate more quickly, this means that the hydrological (water) cycle accelerates. Globally this has resulted in a 6% to 10% increase in overall precipitation, this is one of the reasons that there has been such a huge rise in the number of flood events.
? Throughout the oceans there are a system of currents that transport vast quantities of water around the world. Perhaps the best known is the Gulf Stream, this is one of many that make up the overall system known as thermohaline circulation. The ‘thermo’ part in the name tells you that heat is one of the driving factors, the ‘haline’ part refers to density. As the amount of heat in the oceans change, it can impact on these ocean currents. It’s not a well understood area and no-one is quite sure how these ocean currents could be affected; there are many possible outcomes. Any changes will affect climates in the affected areas. For example the Gulf Stream transports warm water from the Caribbean to Northern Europe and this warms the climate there by up to 7°C, without the Gulf Stream countries such as the UK would be much colder and parts of them would be covered in glaciers.
? Heat from the land and oceans is the cause of winds. As the warm air rises it sucks in the surrounding air at the bottom, but as it rises it also cools and falls back toward Earth, this sets up a rotation of air masses. The fact that Earth is rotating deflects these air masses. With more heat in the oceans there is more energy to feed into the wind systems.
? Warmer oceans are helping to melt ice in the Polar regions. In the Arctic this has become critical, there is far less ice there than there used to be; the situation in Antarctica is far less severe. The melting of Arctic ice is adding to sea-level rises and threatening the habitat of species that live there. On the positive side it does mean that ocean going vessels can now sail round the north of Canada and Siberia.
? As the oceans warm CO2 that is already held in the oceans will be released and this can further add to global warming. At the same time, more CO2 is absorbed from the atmosphere and the overall concentration of CO2 in the oceans is increasing (carbonate is decreasing). CO2 in the oceans forms carbonic acid and as a result the oceans are becoming less alkaline, a process known as acidification. This is threatening many marine species, particularly corals and other tiny species such as phytoplankton. These species help to regulate global climates by removing CO2 from the atmosphere and limiting the amount of warming that takes place.
Explained here: http://www.nrdc.org/oceans/acidification...
climate change is not about ozone layer, our ozone layer was damaged by CFC's which were banned through the Montreal Accord, and it is now returning to normal.
Greenhouse gases such as CO2 are supposed to warm our planet by reflecting heat back to earth.
However as CO2 warming effect is logarithmically diminished as concentration rises, not much warming is happening, in fact our earths temperatures have not risen for the last 15yrs.
You seem... deeply confused about AGW. Greenhouse gasses (other than CFCs) have little if anything to do with the ozone layer. And the ozone layer has little if anything to do with warming.
But these links might help you:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
http://aip.org/history/climate/summary.h...
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...
http://www.realclimate.org/
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;... (a while back, I asked people to post links to sources at various experience levels)
edit: though Trevor gave an otherwise excellent answer, he erred in one respect.
Warmer waters hold *less* CO2. The reason for ocean acidification is the higher levels of atmospheric CO2. In fact, one piece of evidence for the increase in CO2 being anthropogenic rather than natural in origin is that the oceans are increasing in CO2 content even as they warm.
Warm water is circulated by the ocean currents up to the poles, causing them to slowly melt. This melting of polar ice caps leads to a rise in sea level which causes all kinds of problems for low-lying areas and coastlines. Eventually, they'll be underwater again. Warm water that melts the poles leads to an increased amount of freshwater being dumped into the oceans which decreases the salinity - shutting down the overturning circulation in the ocean currents. Again, all kinds of problems here. El Nino events occur based on ocean circulation (as well as other factors). I'm not sure if this is the kind of info you were looking for but I hope this and the websites help!
http://geography.about.com/od/physicalge...
http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/oc...
I am a big fun of Rayban as well.
I always buy from this site...
it just does
I'm doing a project on greenhouse gases destroying the ozone layer making the rays of the sun come stronger to the earth warming the water. How does warm water effect the climate? If you can link me to any websites that would help! Thank you in advance!
