Oceans & Climate
Understand the connection between the ocean and climate: the ocean absorbs heat and carbon dioxide, drives weather patterns through evaporation, and ocean currents distribute warmth around the planet — making the ocean Earth's climate engine
What a learner can do afterwards
- Explain that the ocean absorbs a large amount of the Sun's heat and atmospheric carbon dioxide
- Describe the ocean's role in the water cycle through evaporation
- Explain how ocean currents distribute warmth and affect weather patterns in distant places
1 · Read
The ocean does more than hold fish and waves. It helps set the weather where you live, from warm days to rainy days. Scientists call the ocean Earth's climate engine because it soaks up heat from the sun and carbon dioxide from the air, helps make rain, and its currents move warmth around the globe.
The water cycle goes round and round, so it has no fixed beginning. Start with ocean water warmed by the Sun. It turns into water vapor that rises into the sky, and that change is called evaporation. Higher up the vapor cools into tiny water droplets and ice crystals, which is what a cloud is made of. The cloud drops rain or snow back onto land and sea.
The water cycle keeps going round. This example starts with evaporation at the ocean.
A warm current called the Gulf Stream carries warm water from near the equator toward Europe. As it flows, it releases heat into the air above it. That is one reason winters in parts of Western Europe stay milder than winters in other places just as far north. Winds blowing off the sea carry that milder air inland too.
Currents do not just move water. They move heat too. A change in ocean currents can change the weather in places thousands of miles away.
The ocean stores heat and carbon dioxide, powers the water cycle through evaporation, and carries warmth around the planet through currents. That is why it is Earth's climate engine.
Rewritten readings were written for this dataset.
2 · Watch
Take it off screen
Where it sits
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.