Assignment #2

Physical Oceanography
KL2205
Ahmad Muklis Firdaus, ST.MT.

Shafira Anindita
15512049
Ocean Engineering Department
Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Bandung Institute of Technology
2014

What is global warming? Global warming is basically a rising of earths average

temperature due to the effect of heat-trapping gas, or more commonly known as
greenhouse effect. This phenomenons effects include extreme weather events, radiative
forcing, oxygen depletion, and warmer temperature of ocean. The rising temperature of
even a two to six degree of the ocean would lead to significant effects, including the
melting of glaciers and icebergs in Arctic sea and loss of freshwater storage in
Himalayan glaciers. And all these events would cause a big long-term effect: sea level
rise.
Sea levels worldwide are indicated to have been rising at rate of 3.5 millimeters
each year. This phenomenon is induced by numbers of main factors, they are melting of
thermal expansion, and ice loss from Greenland and West Antartica, and glaciers and
icebergs 1 .
Latest scientific research indicates that icebergs in Arctic sea melt faster than ever
and the North Atlantic seawater has already become fresher over the past times. As the
global warming occurs, the precipitation in North Atlantic increases, plus the ice in
Arctic sea continues to melt, then the freshwater from the melting ice flows out over the
ocean at mid and high latitudes, and making the seawater at those areas less salty and
hence less dense, and this what makes the North Atlantic sea water fresher than
previously2. This less salty and less dense seawater wont be able to sinks and circulates
the deep ocean as its supposed to be, and this leads to anomaly of thermohaline
circulation or more well-known as the ocean conveyor belt circulation.
Thermohaline circulation is a large-scale constant water movement or circulation
in ocean. This motion is caused by surfaced heat and freshwater flows. Thermo derives
from temperature, and haline derives from salinity. Cold and high saline water sinks to
the bottom part of the ocean, and warmer and less saline water rises to surface. The
warmer water heats the atmosphere in the northern latitudes, and then it gets cooler and
less dense and sink, then it flows south down all the way to the Antartica, and eventually
the cold water is able to get warm again and continue the circulation3.
The ocean conveyor belt circulation is supposed to move warmer water in the
surface from southern hemisphere toward the North Pole. This carries a great heat
toward the north from the south, and this plays a big role in maintaining the climate. As

1 Source: http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-sea-level-rise/
2 https://spark.ucar.edu/longcontent/melting-arctic-sea-ice-and-ocean-circulation
3 http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/conveyor.html

we can see from above, these are linked one another. If the global warming occurs,
Arctic sea continues to melt, the salinity and density of the water in the surface reduce,
the ocean conveyor belt circulation will slowly be disrupted, and eventually leads to the
climate interference. If the circulation stops, the heat in the southern hemisphere will not
be carried northward, and this will cause the southern hemisphere to get warmer, and the
northern hemisphere to get colder by 5o to 10o Celcius. Geographically, the eastern
North America and the western Europe will experience a significant climate shift.
Other than that, the impact of global warming to the ocean is a warmer ocean. It is
true that the report says ocean temperature is a better indicator of global warming than
the air temperature4. By the global warming occurring, the atmosphere stores less
percentage capacity of heat, the surface of earth absorbs heat slowly because it is a poor
conductor, and thus, ocean absorbs the heat for almost all of the earths radiative
imbalance. These abnormal changing of temperature of the ocean does not only affect
the thermohaline current but also causes a big changes to the marine food chain. As the
ocean temperature rises, zooplanktons tend to overgrow the phytoplanktons which
suppose to suck up carbon dioxide.

4 http://www.theage.com.au/environment/rising-ocean-temperatures-near-worstcase-predictions-

20090619-cmcs.html