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The oceans are an integral part of our planet’s climate system. Understanding the physical processes at work in the sea is crucial therefore to making accurate predictions about the effects of climate change.
The exploration of ocean worlds in the outer Solar System offers the opportunity to search for an independent origin of life, and also to advance our capabilities for exploring and understanding life in Earth’s oceans.
Biological communities beneath Antarctic ice shelves remain a mystery, hampering assessment of ecosystem development after ice-shelf collapse. Here we highlight major gaps in understanding of the patterns and processes in these areas, and suggest effective ways to study the ecological impacts of ice-shelf loss under climate change.
The response of storms, blocks and jet streams to external forcing, basin-to-basin and tropical–extratropical interactions, and non-linear predictive theory, are highlighted as strategic areas to advance understanding of regional climate dynamics
A characteristic ‘fingerprint’ of sea-surface temperatures suggests that the Atlantic overturning circulation has slowed substantially since the mid-twentieth century, as predicted by climate models in response to increasing carbon dioxide emissions.