Question

How does the exceptional heat capacity of water affect the climate on earth?

Answer 1

Take an example of greenhouse gases which resist earth to give back the radiations of sun. Here the sun's radiation is responsible for the phenomenon of increasing heat. That increase if not compensated by giving back the gases, will definitely increase the temperature and at last the surface becomes resistant to heat supply.

Complete step by step answer:
- Before beginning with the effect of heat capacity on the climate of earth, let’s see what heat capacity is firstly. Heat capacity we all read in our books of chemistry that when we give heat to any substance its temperature also increases, this relation means heat $q$ and temperature $T$ are related as given by the expression that $q$ is directly proportional to $T$ .
- When we remove the proportionality, we get a constant represented by capital $C$ this is called heat capacity. We can also write its expression as $C = \dfrac{q}{{\Delta T}}$ .Now the question arises about its effect on climate. Think about the relational increase and decrease in quantities. If heat capacity increases the value of the fraction $\dfrac{q}{{\Delta T}}$ should remain constant, so temperature decreases to such an extent that it will be equal to the increase in heat $q$ .
- Now when we are talking about earth climate we judge the phenomenon on the ocean because most of the surface of earth is covered by water. The heat capacity of the ocean makes the temperature of the ocean relatively resistant to change.
- Let’s take an example for better understanding, if we talk about oceans or a specific amount the heat capacity changes to specific heat capacity, so if the specific heat is the amount of heat required to raise a substance’s temperature by $1K$ because here in case of ocean it is heating continuously be sun’s radiation. As our atmosphere is surrounded by greenhouse gases which are mostly responsible for heating the earth surface or raising the temperature. - The sun’s radiation is hitting the sea and thus carbon dioxide like gases are held within the sea because the sea doesn’t evaporate back, so it becomes resistant to heat change. In other types of atmosphere as other planets have they can easily evaporate back the heating caused by the sun and thus they will no longer be resistant to heat change they can continuously give back the heating radiation which is given by the sun.

Note: Earth's surface is different from other planets, we have such a type of atmosphere which is full of gases which we call greenhouse gases. They have the tendency to heat the atmosphere and increase the heat capacity of earth. Don’t forget to compare the atmospheres of other planets which do not have this type of atmosphere for better understanding of heat resistivity of earth.