Warmer Oceans means stronger troughs over the continents hence colder winters and hotter summers.
OOPs.
Mystery of Missing Heat: Upper Ocean has cooled slightly in recent years.
Between 2003 and 2005, the top layers of the world's oceans cooled slightly, but scientists aren't sure where the heat went.
According to climate data gathered worldwide, 2003, 2004, and 2005 are three of the five warmest years since reliable record keeping of global air temperatures began more than a century ago. However, oceanographic surveys suggest that on average, the upper 750 meters of the world's ice-free oceans cooled about 0.03°C during that 3-year period.
Upper 750 Meters of Ocean temp.
The waater below a few meters does not have a direct effect on weather pattern formation.
NOAA's National Climate Data Center is idicating that we have warming of the Oceans surface.
e.g. Globally averaged ocean surface temperatures were 0.44°C (0.79°F) above the 1880-2002 mean, second warmest for January-October 2003.
January-September 2006 Global
Ocean +0.43°C (+0.77°F)
Raw data by month since 1880 is here.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat
You can plot the trend line and the global surface temperature change is pretty obvious.