As the surface ocean warms and polar ice sheets melt due to increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, near-surface stratification is increasing almost everywhere, including the major deep water formation regions in the high-latitude North Atlantic and around Antarctica. As a result, the global Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC), also known as the global ocean... Continue Reading →
The Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) is the densest water mass of the global ocean that covers about 30 ~ 40% of the global ocean volume with temperatures ranging from -0.8 to 2°C and salinities from 34.6 to 34.7 psu. It forms around Antarctica and spreads into the Southern Ocean and then into the Atlantic, Indian,... Continue Reading →
The Larsen ice shelves extend along the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula over the northwest part of the Weddell Sea. From north to south, these segments are called the Larsen A, B, C, and D, bordered by Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf south of the Weddell Sea. In 1995, the Larsen A ice shelf completely disintegrated,... Continue Reading →
The warming response of the upper atmosphere is much stronger in the tropics due to higher water vapor content and frequent deep tropical convection that maintains the atmosphere column well-mixed. As a result, the zonal jet strength, which is largely proportional to the meridional gradient of atmosphere temperature via "thermal wind relationship" is projected to... Continue Reading →
Antarctic sea-ice has expanded over the period of continuous satellite monitoring, which seemingly contradicts ongoing global warming resulting from increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases. A variety of hypotheses have been proposed to explain the observed Antarctic sea-ice expansion and corresponding model–observation discrepancy, but the issue remains unresolved. In a new study published in Nature Climate... Continue Reading →
Due to rapidly rising air temperature over the Arctic and subarctic regions, the ocean-to-air turbulent (i.e., sensible and latent) heat flux over the Greenland, Iceland, and Norwegian Seas (GINS) has diminished (i.e., less cooling of the surface ocean) steadily during the satellite period (i.e., since the 1970s). This may lead to a reduction of deep... Continue Reading →
Previous studies based on the climate models participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) have suggested an increase in the frequency of extreme El Niño events in the 21st Century in response to increasing greenhouse gases. Several studies have attributed these shifts in El Niño frequency and amplitude to the projected changes in the... Continue Reading →
Ship-based CO2 flux estimates of the contemporary air-sea flux of CO2 showed that the Southern Ocean (south of 35oS) plays an important role as a significant carbon sink, with a net uptake at the rate of −0.8 ~ −1.0 Pg C/year (Takahashi et al., 2009; Landschützer et al., 2014) largely consistent with climate model-based estimates... Continue Reading →
Although ocean acidification (OA) is mainly driven by the ocean uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, multiple factors including changes in ocean temperature, biological processes, and river discharge influence its temporal progression. In a new paper accepted in the Geophysical Research Letters, a team of researchers from the Northern Gulf Institute of the... Continue Reading →
The freshwater cycle in the Earth System is a delicate balance between the net loss (i.e., evaporation > precipitation) in the warm tropical-subtropical oceans, the net gain (i.e., precipitation > evaporation) in the cold polar oceans, and the net poleward transport by the atmosphere. These processes maintain the tropical-subtropical oceans salty and the polar oceans... Continue Reading →
Ocean to Climate 