Over the last 50 years the oceans have taken up over 89% of the excess energy

 The ocean plays a critical role in modulating the Earth’s climate system and over the last 50 years it has taken up over 89% of the excess energy due to greenhouse warming. Since the early 1990s, the rate of ocean warming has likely doubled. However, our current understanding of the spatial distribution of ocean heat uptake and storage is limited, not least because of sparse observations with large uncertainties, especially in sea-ice covered regions and the deep ocean. Fully coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models and ocean-sea ice models simulate a complete representation of the global ocean and are now increasingly used to assess the ocean heat content evolution.  Experiments done emphasise that recent trends in Southern Ocean surface winds, surface air temperature and radiation have driven almost all of the globally integrated ocean warming of the past half century. Increased observational coverage over the Southern Ocean is therefore key to reconcile global surface heat fluxes, ocean heat uptake and heat content changes, as well as building increased confidence in climate models and climate change projections for the coming decades.


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  • Maurice F. Huguenin, 
  • Ryan M. Holmes & 
  • Matthew H. England 
    • Nature Communications 

    volume

     13, Article number: 4921 (2022) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32540-5




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