If I open the windows in my room, which has AC turned on and it’s cool in the summer, it will quickly become as hot as it is outside, why isn’t it happening around the globe?
In: Physics
If I understand it rightly, it’s always trying for an equilibrium, and always failing. Heat flows from the tropics to the poles, which is why the arctic is warming at the fastest rate on the planet. BUT – air has very little heat capacity, and air temperature is very much conditioned by the local ground or sea surface temperature. Most of the heat that reaches the planet ends up in the oceans, and it takes a very long time for heat to distribute through the water column. So ocean currents transport heat around, and where they go is shaped by continents. The Arctic, for instance, is much more open to heat inflow than the Antarctic, which is walled off to some degree by the winds and currents circling it (not entirely – as the oceans warm they eat away at Antarctic ice sheets).
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