As you can see from the previous Worked Example, the ocean can absorb a massive amount of energy before its temperature will change. This means that the atmosphere will warm more slowly than it would otherwise, because the energy gained by the atmosphere due to the absorption of IR radiation by greenhouse gases can be siphoned off to the ocean. While this may seem like a nice fix for climate change, there are a few problems with this idea.
First, although the oceans ability to hold energy and absorb heat can minimize the warming of the atmosphere as a whole, the parts of the atmosphere which are not above or near an ocean will not be cooled in this manner. Certain areas of the atmosphere will still be drastically warmed because of climate change.
Second, the transfer of heat to the ocean occurs slowly. Therefore, although the ocean can slow the temperature increase of the atmosphere, it is unlikely that it will prevent the atmosphere’s temperature from increasing altogether.
Third, although the oceans' high specific heat capacities prevent dramatic oceanic temperature change, warming of the ocean can have harmful side effects. For instance, as the water in the oceans is warmed, it will also expand. This phenomenon is called thermal expansion and, along with the melting of land ice caps (which is discussed later in the lesson), could result in significant sea level rise, with devastating effects for coastal regions.