The Ocean’s Role in Climate Change

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Climatology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2023) | Viewed by 9383

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Institute of Natural and Technical Systems, 99011 Sevastopol, Russia
Interests: climate variability; climate change; the ocean’s role in climate change
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Faculty of Physics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
Interests: climate change; external forcing; climate feedback; biogeochemical processes

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue, “The Ocean’s Role in Climate Change”, is devoted to the key element of the climate system accounting for its low-frequency variability. In fact, the ocean impacts the climate system through the following mechanisms:

  1. The ocean is heating and cooling much more slowly compared with the atmosphere. As a result, the ocean dampens the large-scale climatic contrasts. Among the others, it decreases the magnitude of the seasonal variations of hydrometeorological parameters and leads to the redness of climatic spectra.
  2. The ocean is the main source of atmospheric vapour. Concurrently, it absorbs the majority of the additional anthropogenic heating of the troposphere–ocean’s system. As a result, the ocean regulates cloudiness and has a crucial impact on the Earth’s radiation (and heat) balance.
  3. The ocean absorbs around a quarter of the contemporary annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions. This leads to the acidification of the ocean. Its ability to sequester carbon further is still under-explored and might depend on the organic part of the carbon cycle. Moreover, there is an ongoing discussion on the potential release of methane from the subsea sediments, which might add to the future climate change.
  4. The ocean accounts for at least half of the total meridional heat fluxes in the low-latitude climate system. As a result, it reduces the latitudinal climatic contrasts and creates a milder climate.
  5. The ocean can determine the some of the climate system’s internal quasi-periodical variations due to the typical temporal scales of baroclinic adjustment of large-scale oceanic gyres and thermohaline circulation to the changing atmospheric conditions and/or sporadic instability of large-scale oceanic currents.
  6. The ocean can generate abrupt climate change as a result, for instance, of thermohaline catastrophe.

The above topics are the principal focus of the Special Issue.

Dr. Alexander Polonsky
Dr. Alexey Eliseev
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • climate change
  • external forcing
  • climate feedback
  • biogeochemical processes

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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18 pages, 7361 KiB  
Article
A Relationship between Changes of Surface Air and Sea Floor Temperatures at the Arctic Shelf from the Coupled Models Intercomparison Project, Phase 6 Data
by Valentina V. Malakhova and Alexey V. Eliseev
Atmosphere 2023, 14(6), 1024; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14061024 - 14 Jun 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1494
Abstract
The sensitivity of seafloor temperature TB to the warming of surface air temperature Ta is examined for 1850–2300, based on simulations with five models from the Coupled Models Intercomparison Project phase 6 ensemble and driven by a scenario with high anthropogenic [...] Read more.
The sensitivity of seafloor temperature TB to the warming of surface air temperature Ta is examined for 1850–2300, based on simulations with five models from the Coupled Models Intercomparison Project phase 6 ensemble and driven by a scenario with high anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. In this historical period (until 2015), sensitivity coefficients α=ΔTB/ΔTa (Δ indicates changes relative to the pre-industrial period) were typically ≤0.12 for annual means and up to 0.43 in summer. However, during the same period in the Barents Sea sector, the sensitivity coefficients were as large as 0.6 in summer. For summer, the obtained results are consistent with the limited measurements available for the Siberian shelf. In future, sensitivity coefficients will increase markedly, and α0.7 will become common for the part of the Arctic shelf that becomes ice-free in summer. Our results have implications for estimating the future thermal state of subsea sediments, as well as for oceanic biota. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Ocean’s Role in Climate Change)
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14 pages, 1834 KiB  
Article
Regional Features of the Arctic Sea Ice Area Changes in 2000–2019 versus 1979–1999 Periods
by Tatiana A. Matveeva and Vladimir A. Semenov
Atmosphere 2022, 13(9), 1434; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13091434 - 5 Sep 2022
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 2789
Abstract
One of the most striking manifestations of ongoing climate change is a rapid shrinking of the Arctic sea ice area (SIA). An important feature of the observed SIA loss is a nonlinear rate of a decline with an accelerated decrease in the 2000–2019 [...] Read more.
One of the most striking manifestations of ongoing climate change is a rapid shrinking of the Arctic sea ice area (SIA). An important feature of the observed SIA loss is a nonlinear rate of a decline with an accelerated decrease in the 2000–2019 period relative to a more gradual decline in 1979–1999. In this study, we perform a quantitative assessment and comparison of the spatial-temporal SIA changes during these two periods. It was found that winter Arctic SIA loss is primarily associated with changes in the Barents Sea, where the SIA decline in 2000–2019 has accelerated more than three-fold in comparison with 1979–1999. In summer and autumn, rates of SIA decline in 2000–2019 increased most strongly in the Kara, Beaufort Seas, the Northwestern Passage, and inner Arctic Ocean. The amplitude of the SIA seasonal cycle has also increased in 2000–2019 in comparison with the earlier period, with the largest changes in the inner Arctic Ocean, the Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Beaufort Seas in summer and in the Barents Sea in winter. The results may reflect a transition to a new dynamic state in the recent two decades with the triggering of positive feedbacks in the Arctic climate system. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Ocean’s Role in Climate Change)
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Review

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10 pages, 1662 KiB  
Review
Arctic Sea Ice Loss Enhances the Oceanic Contribution to Climate Change
by Vladimir Ivanov
Atmosphere 2023, 14(2), 409; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14020409 - 20 Feb 2023
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4475
Abstract
Since the mid-1990s, there has been a marked decrease in the sea ice extent (SIE) in the Arctic Ocean. After reaching an absolute minimum in September 2012, the seasonal variations in the SIE have settled at a new level, which is almost one-quarter [...] Read more.
Since the mid-1990s, there has been a marked decrease in the sea ice extent (SIE) in the Arctic Ocean. After reaching an absolute minimum in September 2012, the seasonal variations in the SIE have settled at a new level, which is almost one-quarter lower than the average climatic norm of 1979–2022. Increased melting and accelerated ice export from marginal seas ensure an increase in the open water area, which affects the lower atmosphere and the surface layer of the ocean. Scientists are cautiously predicting a transition to a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean as early as the middle of this century, which is about 50 years earlier than was predicted just a few years ago. Such predictions are based on the fact that the decrease in sea ice extent and ice thinning that occurred at the beginning of this century, initially caused by an increase in air temperature, triggered an increase in the thermal and dynamic contribution of the ocean to the further reduction in the ice cover. This paper reviews published evidence of such changes and discusses possible mechanisms behind the observed regional anomalies of the Arctic Sea ice cover parameters in the last decade. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Ocean’s Role in Climate Change)
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