Janet Baraclough .. wrote in
:

The message
from J Kolenovsky contains these words:

Salty Thumb wrote:


Well most of what you said sounds reasonable, but I guess my point
about water is probably more or less your point without the
geologic scale. I'm guessing the ridiculously high specific heat of
water will moderate the temperature extremes of any local climate
a lot better and therefore someone (like me) who lives in a coastal
region is more likely (but not like me) to say "global warming?
what global warming" even though the weather is nutty, but because
of the moderating effect of the ocean, not as nutty as it could be.

Sorry to pour cold water on your hopes, but you've missed one of the
points that DKat made in her excellent explanation. She said " What
keeps the West coast so much warmer than the East coast is the pattern
of the ocean's currents."

I saw that, but I question whether ocean currents is the main factor in the
temperature difference. After all, you note that the east coast (well,
east coast of US) has its own well known current, the Gulf Stream (although
it may be famous for historical reasons and not because of the temperature
gradient). To me, having a large mountain mass blocking air (and therefore
heat) from escaping east makes more sense, (the Rockies being significantly
higher than the Appalachians).

"Pour cold water on ...", haha very punny.

As well as being vulnerable to atmospheric changes over the ocean
affecting wind-speed and rainfall, coastal climates (even on a large
continent) depend on the temperature and direction of adjacent ocean
currents.

Global warming is melting the polar icecaps fast, and a flood of cold
water with a different specific gravity, running into an ocean from
one direction, is thought likely to change the temperature and/or
direction of existing currents. Those changes would affect coastal
regions first.

Well like DKat said, weather is complicated