Some people tend to think of Global Warming in term of air temperatures on the surface of the earth. However, the earth is composed of many more things that can absorb heat energy. Interestingly, there is not as much coverage on all the other parts of the earth as they don’t have as much of an impact on our daily lives. The IPCC Technical Summary has some good technical information of where and how the globe is warming. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-ts.pdf On page 47 is Figure TS.15, which list the changes of earths energy content (heating) in terms of 10^22 joules between 1961 to 2003. By far the largest component of the earths energy system are the Oceans. Not just the surface of the oceans, but their entire depth. Ice Caps and Glaciers are other notable components as is the soil of the continents as well. It is a simple matter to convert these values to percentages as shown the following: Percent of Heating (1961-2003) Oceans 89.3% Continents 4.8% Atmosphere 3.1% Glaciers 1.4% Arctic Sea Ice 0.9% Antarctic 0.4% Greenland 0.1% TOTAL 100.0% Notice that while the atmosphere has warmed, both the oceans and land have absorbed more heat. Also, all the different forms of ice have totaled about 2.4%, a significant amount compared to the atmosphere’s 3.1% share. To put this into perspective, the rest of the earth has absorbed 30 times as much heat as the atmosphere! Also, I’ve noticed some clumsy skeptics like to suggest that global warming is due to changes in the earth’s oceans, implying that the atmosphere has warmed because less heat is being absorbed by the oceans. However, as can be seen from above, just the opposite is true. In fact every major component of the earth is warming and the oceans have been absorbing the bulk of it. It’s also interesting to consider how the oceans warm. Warm water is less dense and tends to float on the surface, while the deepest water is the coldest. This make it difficult to transport heat energy into the depths of the oceans and theoretically it would be possible for a stagnant condition to occur. That is the surface waters could warm significantly without heating the depths. Normally heat is transported to the depths from mixing thru wind and wave action along with the meridional overturning circulation. However, long term records of the relative strengths of these processes are sparse and I suspect that computer models are all over the place with predictions. Of course, the science will gradually advance to better understand the coming changes, but I suspect there will be some surprises along the way.