Speaker
Description
The ocean covers more than 70% of the Earth's surface and controls the Earth's climate on various time scales, especially longer than decades. Due to its long-term internal variability and variable response to increasing greenhouse gases, observed changes in ocean variables such as sea surface temperature show inhomogeneous warming patterns among different regions over the past decades. These include cooling or no warming over the Southern Ocean, the tropical Pacific and the subpolar North Atlantic, while the global mean temperature has risen steadily. Such an inhomogeneous warming pattern, with some paradoxical cooling trends, can be explained ironically by the consequences of global warming. In the Southern Ocean, for example, recent cooling can be attributed to increased meltwater from ice shelves and ice sheets in response to global warming.
This presentation will introduce the role of the ocean in climate, recent observed ocean changes and their potential mechanisms, and future ocean changes in a warming world.
References
Park, W., & Latif, M. (2019). Ensemble global warming simulations with idealized Antarctic meltwater input. Climate Dynamics, 52(5-6), 3223-3239.
| Keywords | Global warming, Climate change, Ocean warming |
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