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 →
Plastics are now widely distributed in the global ocean, serving as a new and serious contaminant for marine ecosystems. For instance, ingestion of small plastic detritus ( 0.1 μm ~ 5 mm), “microplastics” by fish, mussels and seabirds has been widely reported. A recent study (Cole et al., 2013) used fluorescence bioimaging techniques to show... Continue Reading →
The Arctic warming response to increasing greenhouse gas is substantially greater than the rest of the globe. It has been suggested that this phenomenon, commonly referred to as Arctic amplification, and its peak in boreal fall and winter result primarily from the so-called lapse-rate feedback, which is associated with the vertical structure of tropospheric warming,... Continue Reading →
The Arctic Ocean in the upper 100 - 200 m is typically characterized by a cold and fresh surface mixed layer and a layer of rapidly increasing salinity with depth, as known as halocline, separating the surface mixed layer from the warm and salty Atlantic water at depth. Due to large vertical density gradient and... Continue Reading →
A decade-long increase of the basin-wide sea level and heat content in the subtropical southern Indian Ocean (SIO) during 2004–2013 ended abruptly, immediately following the onset of the strong 2014–2016 El Niño. Interestingly, this unprecedented drop of the SIO heat quickly recovered during the weak 2017–2018 La Niña. A study recently published in Science Advances... Continue Reading →
In a new study published in Nature Climate Change, Clem and colleagues reported that the South Pole has experienced a record-high warming of 1.81 ± 1.02°C during the last 30 years, three times larger than the global average. They used observational records to show that the recent warming of the South Pole, which started around 2000 following... Continue Reading →
The climate model simulations forced with increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases consistently project a robust decline of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) and a strengthening of the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds, which may in turn result in an increase in the Southern Ocean MOC. In a research article recently accepted in the Journal of Physical... Continue Reading →
Observations from Argo floats and satellite shows that the rate of global ocean warming during 2005-2015 is largely consistent with the climate simulations under the increasing greenhouse gas concentration. However, during that period, the southern hemisphere oceans have absorbed up to 98% of the net global ocean heat gain, while the warming of northern hemisphere... Continue Reading →
Under the high emission scenario for the future (RCP 8.5), a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean (i.e., sea-ice extent less than 10-6 km2 for at least five consecutive years) in northern summer is likely before 2050. A decrease in Antarctic sea-ice extent is also expected during the 21st century, but at a slower rate with large uncertainty.... Continue Reading →
A study published in Nature Geoscience (Bronselaer et al., 2020) analyzed new observations from autonomous floats with ocean-biogeochemical sensors (Bio-Argo) along with historical shipboard ocean measurements to document changes in Southern Ocean physical and ocean-biogeochemical variables (i.e., temperature, salinity, pH, concentrations of nitrate, dissolved inorganic carbon and oxygen) during the last two decades. Due to... Continue Reading →
Ocean to Climate 