wouldn’t more water in oceans mean more water for evaporation that creates clouds, that would in turn reflect the sunlight to cool everything down? Then cycle starts over
In: Earth Science
The amount of clouds that would be created by having the ice caps melt wouldn’t be enough to counter the increased heat on Earth from the greenhouse gases we release.
The water evaporates from the ocean surface. And even though the oceans gets bigger when there is more water in them this is not a very significant factor, except for everyone living near the coast. But higher temperatures will increase evaporation and this will mean more clouds. The problem is that while clouds is white and reflect light most of the energy from the Sun is in the form of ultraviolet light which more easily pass through the clouds. However heat energy from the Earth is mainly infrared which gets reflected by the clouds. So clouds and even just humidity is a net increase in temperature due to the greenhouse effect.
Water evaporates at the surface of the ocean and as objects expand in 3D space they gain volume at a greater rate than they gain surface area.
Think about filling a glass with water. You may double the amount of water in the glass but the area of the exposed water surface doesn’t significantly change.
Another issue is that plants evaporate up to 99% of the water they absorb through their roots through the process of transpiration. An acre of corn for example will evaporate 3-4000 gallons of water every day. Replacing land area with ocean is a trade off with likely a *reduced* surface area for evaporation; there is a higher surface area of leaves per acre than an acre of ocean surface.
Two things:
1. The amount of water in the ocean doesn’t change the amount of moisture in the air.
2. The relationship between clouds and temperature is complicated. While they generally lower temperature during daytime, they generally raise it during nighttime, for example.
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