Published on January 30, 2018
One of the amazing properties of water on Earth is that water has the
highest heat capacity of just about any natural substance known. It
takes months for the Atlantic waters to absorb the intense tropical
sunlight, but during the process an amazing amount of energy is stored
in the water. This energy makes its way into tropical storm clouds when
water evaporates from the ocean surface. Water molecules are in
essence “mobile solar collectors” that transfer the ocean’s energy into
clouds, where the energy can then power a hurricane.
