Physical oceanography articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The capacity of coral reefs to keep pace with sea-level rise is central to their ability to continue to provide shoreline protection to vulnerable coastal communities. Here, the study shows that whereas restoration has the potential to minimize climate-change impacts, doing nothing will amplify them.

    • Lauren T. Toth
    • , Curt D. Storlazzi
    •  & Richard B. Aronson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In contrast to the North Atlantic, the projected overturning circulation in the Nordic Seas increases throughout most of the 21st century in global climate model simulations. The Nordic Seas could therefore be a stabilizing factor in the future AMOC.

    • Marius Årthun
    • , Helene Asbjørnsen
    •  & Kjetil Våge

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors investigate marine heatwaves on the ocean bottom in the shallow waters surrounding North America. Relative to their surface counterparts, bottom marine heatwaves are often more intense, more persistent, and can occur independently.

    • Dillon J. Amaya
    • , Michael G. Jacox
    •  & Adam S. Phillips

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Based on two high-resolution simulations, the authors find that submesoscale eddies significantly boost poleward oceanic heat transport in Antarctic waters by strengthening transport capability of mesoscale eddies through inverse energy cascade.

    • Zhiwei Zhang
    • , Yuelin Liu
    •  & Jiwei Tian

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study reports a dense, late summer phytoplankton bloom in the Southern Ocean that accumulated unusually high levels of organic matter and supported feeding hot spots for birds and whales. The authors show that this recurring open ocean bloom is driven by anomalies in easterly winds that push sea ice southwards and favour the upwelling of deep waters enriched in hydrothermal iron.

    • Sebastien Moreau
    • , Tore Hattermann
    •  & Harald Steen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors use an advanced data-mining method to show how “extreme modes” of large-scale climate variability, such as El Niño, can lead to devastating marine heatwaves.

    • Christopher C. Chapman
    • , Didier P. Monselesan
    •  & Bernadette M. Sloyan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Winter sea ice production appears to have been increasing, despite Arctic warming being most intense during winter. Here the authors examine the competing factors controlling sea ice production in the Kara and Laptev seas, and develop a simple model that explains the rise and subsequent fall of ice production under climate change.

    • S. B. Cornish
    • , H. L. Johnson
    •  & A. E. Richards

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A comprehensive database of summer data reveals long-term changes in the vertical distribution of water masses on the Northeast Greenland Shelf, which will be important for driving ecosystem change through altered stratification and nutrient supply.

    • Caroline V. B. Gjelstrup
    • , Mikael K. Sejr
    •  & Colin A. Stedmon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A phase of unique turbulent oceanographic and tectonic circumstances during the Early Oligocene caused high productivity in the Australian Antarctic Basin and enabled the stabilization of colder global climates.

    • Katharina Hochmuth
    • , Joanne M. Whittaker
    •  & Joseph H. LaCasce

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In addition to locally generated tidal mixing, remotely generated planetary (Kelvin and Rossby) waves and eddies are found to supply energy into the Indonesian Seas, sufficient to drive mixing in the upper ocean at rates inferred from observations.

    • Chengyuan Pang
    • , Maxim Nikurashin
    •  & Bernadette M. Sloyan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Increased extreme high sea level events and concurrence of marine heatwaves are observed along the Indian Ocean coast of Indonesia in the past decade due to the combined impact of anthropogenic warming and natural decadal climate variability.

    • Weiqing Han
    • , Lei Zhang
    •  & Wen Xing

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study uses a compilation of 58 population genetic studies of 47 phylogenetically divergent marine sedentary species over the Mediterranean basin to assess how genetic differentiation is predicted by different dispersal models. Multi-generation dispersal models reveal implicit links among siblings from a common ancestor (coalescent connectivity) that could improve spatial conservation planning.

    • Térence Legrand
    • , Anne Chenuil
    •  & Vincent Rossi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Based on coupled climate model simulations the authors show that changes to the Earth’s surface energy balance following global-scale forestation and deforestation may change the strength of the jet stream, the Hadley cell, and the ocean circulation, which alters remote climate patterns across the globe

    • Raphael Portmann
    • , Urs Beyerle
    •  & Sebastian Schemm

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Vertical exchange in the ocean is an important conduit connecting the surface to the deep and influences the distributions of gases, nutrients, pollutants, and other tracers. Here the authors using high-resolution observations and numerical simulations of the ocean fronts in the Northern Gulf of Mexico reveal that the interaction between the fronts and land-sea breeze creates slantwise pathways for water parcels and induces significant subduction of surface water and upwelling of bottom water.

    • Lixin Qu
    • , Leif N. Thomas
    •  & Jonathan D. Nash

  • Article
    | Open Access

    One of the main challenges in the tsunami inundation prediction is related to the real-time computational efforts done under restrictive time constraints. Here the authors show that using machine learning-based model, we can achieve comparable accuracy to the physics-based model with ~99% computational cost reduction.

    • Iyan E. Mulia
    • , Naonori Ueda
    •  & Kenji Satake

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ocean spatial scale analysis has struggled to capture the vast dynamic range at planetary scales. Here the authors employ a method to probe circulation patterns in the World Ocean, thus opening a promising new window for measuring and understanding the ocean’s role in Earth’s climate system.

    • Benjamin A. Storer
    • , Michele Buzzicotti
    •  & Hussein Aluie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study improves on limitations of the most commonly used spin-up approach for ocean-sea ice models. The authors find that, over the last 50 years, atmospheric changes over the Southern Ocean have driven almost all of the global ocean heat uptake.

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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Compound extreme events in two or more oceanic ecosystem stressors are increasingly considered as a major concern for marine life. Here the authors present a first global analysis on compound marine heatwave and ocean acidity extreme events, identifying hotspots, drivers, and projecting future changes.

    • Friedrich A. Burger
    • , Jens Terhaar
    •  & Thomas L. Frölicher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ocean CO2 uptake at mid-latitudes counteracts CO2 release in the tropics, but we know little about the effects of marine heatwaves that modulate this process. Here, the authors use joint analysis of satellite measurements, in situ observation, reconstructions derived from machine learning algorithms, numerical model of the global ocean, and find that areas where PMHWs most frequently occur coincide with the regions that are the most critical for the oceanic carbon cycle.

    • Alexandre Mignot
    • , Karina von Schuckmann
    •  & Tristan Amm

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The mechanism driving past Laurentide Ice-Sheet instabilities remains elusive Here, the authors present a sediment record from the subpolar western North Atlantic and show that massive warming of the upper interior ocean was the likely trigger for repeated collapses of the Laurentide Ice-Sheet and iceberg discharge into the North Atlantic, known as Heinrich Events.

    • Lars Max
    • , Dirk Nürnberg
    •  & Stefan Mulitza

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate model simulations show that for 1970-2017 externally-forced sea surface temperature increases in the Gulf Stream explain up to 56% of the sea-ice decline in the Barents-Kara Sea during winter via poleward oceanic heat transport.

    • Yoko Yamagami
    • , Masahiro Watanabe
    •  & Jun Ono

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dissolved carbon concentrations in the ocean interior are computed by a deep-learning model using ocean surface data. In the Southern Ocean, they decreased in the 1990s-2000s and increased since 2010, reducing anthropogenic carbon uptake potential.

    • Varvara E. Zemskova
    • , Tai-Long He
    •  & Nicolas Grisouard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Over the past half century, both the Indian Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean exhibit strong warming trends like a global mean surface temperature. In this study, the authors show that not only an increase of greenhouse gases, but also atmospheric teleconnections boost the observed warming trends.

    • Young-Min Yang
    • , Jae-Heung Park
    •  & Bin Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The causes of long-lasting behaviors of multi-year El Niño are still not fully understood. Here, the authors find that persistent two-way teleconnections between the North Pacific Oscillation and the tropical Pacific constitute a key source of multi-year El Niño.

    • Ruiqiang Ding
    • , Yu‐Heng Tseng
    •  & Feifei Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using cold-water corals, this work identifies a deep outflow of Pacific waters via the Tasman Sea during the last ice age, thus highlighting the role of this area for the interoceanic exchange of water masses on climatic time scales.

    • Torben Struve
    • , David J. Wilson
    •  & Tina van de Flierdt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Powerful avalanches were recorded for the first time in an underwater canyon that lies 100 s of km from land. This challenges a long-held view and indicates > 1000 similar canyons worldwide actively pump sediment and pollutants into the deep-sea.

    • M. S. Heijnen
    • , F. Mienis
    •  & M. A. Clare

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Weddell Sea dense water formation facilitates carbon sequestration on centennial time scales. The authors show that for a high-emission scenario, carbon sequestration is reduced by 2100 due to water-mass property changes on the continental shelf.

    • Cara Nissen
    • , Ralph Timmermann
    •  & Judith Hauck

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plastic pollution in seas is widespread, but some areas lack the high concentrations of plastic debris. Here the authors identified places where large amounts of plastic debris pass in the Mediterranean Sea thus helping to study plastic dispersion in regions where plastic debris does not accumulate, and a tool for mitigation strategies.

    • Alberto Baudena
    • , Enrico Ser-Giacomi
    •  & Maria Luiza Pedrotti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    New experiments suggest that the Petermann Ice Shelf in northwest Greenland is unlikely to recover once a breakup occurs in the future. If this is not unique to this ice shelf, continued ocean warming may lead to high discharge from polar ice sheets.

    • Henning Åkesson
    • , Mathieu Morlighem
    •  & Martin Jakobsson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Wave breaking mechanisms relevant for modelling of ocean-atmosphere interaction and rogue waves, remain computationally challenging. The authors propose a machine learning framework for prediction of breaking and its effects on wave evolution that can be applied for forecasting of real world sea states.

    • D. Eeltink
    • , H. Branger
    •  & T. P. Sapsis

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