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Due to the vast extent of its waters, the ocean has been called the long term memory of Earth's climate. When compared to the atmosphere, the ocean has a tremendously high heat capacity and mass. Historically, it has not been easy to measure global day-to-day changes in ocean properties such as temperature and current speed because the ocean is too massive to measure all at once. Oceanic changes are very slow compared to large daily (or even hourly) atmospheric fluctuations.

Today, with the aid of satellites (among other technologies), researchers can detect these minute changes and, by inserting these data into sophisticated climate models, predict future patterns of oceanic processes.

Due to the immense size of the oceans, whenever the oceans are forced into wide scale change, it will take a long time to reach equilibrium. Even after the forcing has been removed, the oceans may still be reacting and changing.

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