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Southern Ocean heat sink hindered by melting ice

Simulations show that the melting of Antarctic ice reduces the production of deep water that stores heat at the bottom of the Southern Ocean. Comprehensive models could reveal whether the trend will persist.
  1. Joellen L. Russell

    1. Joellen L. Russell is in the Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA.

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The Southern Ocean has an extraordinary role in mitigating climate change: it takes up most of the heat absorbed by oceans across the globe, which itself is an estimated 93% of the total heat trapped owing to the increase in greenhouse gases1. This feat is made possible by cold water moving up from the ocean’s depths to the surface waters, where it exchanges heat with the atmosphere. The Southern Ocean’s deepest water is warming much faster than is the rest of the ocean2,3, suggesting that there might be an influx of extra atmospheric heat. However, in a paper in Nature, Li et al.4 report simulations that attribute this observed warming to reduced production of cold, dense ocean waters near Antarctica.

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Nature 615, 799-800 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00835-2

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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