Water temperature has small variations near the bottom if it is deep, so it could be considered in good balance with the seabed (although in some areas there is a strong seismic activity). This is not true for a shellow shelf water and I presume there must be some heat exchange due to seasonal variations, but I am not sure if it is significant. Does anybody have some references to read about?
Start by searching the Internet with keywords "heat flux bottom ocean". This returned 866,000 results just minutes ago, including a number of papers directly addressing your question.
Thank you, Michel, but most of them are about "surface heat flux" and using the word "bottom" somewhere else. Most of the rest are about geothermal heat flux. Hope to dig out something from these 866,000.
Hi Gennady,
Point well taken... Try searching for "heat flux ocean seafloor" instead. Here are a few specific pointers to the literature, starting from the pioneers:
Revelle and Maxwell (1952) 'Heat Flow through the Floor of the Eastern North Pacific Ocean', Nature, Vol. 170, p. 199-200.
Von Herzen and Uyeda (1963) 'Heat flow through the eastern Pacific ocean floor', Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 68, No. 14, p. 4219-4250.
Stein and Stein (1994) 'Constraints on hydrothermal heat flux through the oceanic lithosphere from global heat flow', Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 99, No. B2, p. 3081-3095.
Pelayo and Stein (1994) 'Estimation of oceanic hydrothermal heat flux from heat flow and depths of midocean ridge seismicity and magma chambers', Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 21, No. 8, p. 713-716.
Davis and Fisher (2010) Seafloor heat flow: Methods and observations, in "Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics", edited by Gupta, Springer.
Di Iorio et al. (2012) 'Measurements and Models of Heat Flux and Plumes from Hydrothermal Discharges Near the Deep Seafloor', Oceanography, Vol. 25, No. 1, p. 168–179.
This should at least provide some background for your investigation. Cheers, Michel.
A rough average number for the geothermal flux from the Earth core is 60 mW m^-2 (60 milliwatt per meter squared). The flux can be locally larger, e.g. along the medio oceanic ridges. Depending on how expert you want to become on the subject, you may want to dig more. At least, this is a good start.
Thank you all! I didn't look at this page for a long time and now I found some new answers. Actually, what I meant is not a geothermal heat flux, but heat exchange between seabed and ocean waters in shallow areas, where 1) seasonal temperature variations are significant, and 2) part of solar radiation passes down to the bottom and makes it warmer.
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