• Question: why is it so cold underwater

    Asked by erandavitija to Laura, Lily, Mark, Paul, Sarah on 22 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sarah Bardsley

      Sarah Bardsley answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      We get our warmth from the sun whose rays can’t penetrate underwater.

    • Photo: Laura Maliszewski

      Laura Maliszewski answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Heat on earth comes from two places, the heat from the molten core of the earth and heat absorbed from the sun.

      The ocean is so deep that light doesn’t penetrate it and therefore can’t heat it very well, leaving in very cold. There are small regions of the ocean that are very very hot. These are where vents from the hot gasses trapped inside the earth vent into the ocean. So there are some tiny areas around thermal vents that are very hot, but most of the ocean is very cold.

    • Photo: Mark Roberts

      Mark Roberts answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Because water is good at taking the heat away from your body – so you cool down. Water itself is not heated much by the sun so as it’s colder than you it takes your heat away and makes you colder

    • Photo: Lily Asquith

      Lily Asquith answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      the sun’s light can’t penetrate very far down

    • Photo: Paul Roche

      Paul Roche answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      That’s a really good question – if you go underground it gets hotter, but underwater it gets very cold, although I think the temperature drops to between 0 and 3 degrees at the coldest. The upper layers of the sea are heated by sunlight, and the water is very well mixed up – but deeper down (below a region we call the “thermocline”), the sun’s light does not penetrate, so the water is not heated, and it is also not very well mixed up. So the water down below about 500-1,000 metres is cold, below 4-5 degrees.

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