Effects of Large-Scale Ocean Dynamics on Climate System Response to External Forcing

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change is one of the current global challenges affecting the vital interests and fate of all mankind and requiring the consolidated efforts of all the states of the world for solutions. Unlike all previous climate changes, its current change has two characteristic features. First, the rate of climate change is unprecedented. Secondly, current climate change is "human-made" since its main cause is human activities. Unlike the atmosphere, the ocean, one of the five major components of the Earth’s climate system, has a large heat capacity and thermal inertia. At the same time, in contrast to the cryosphere and lithosphere, the ocean is a fairly mobile geophysical medium with pronounced dynamic properties. The ocean is also a store of thermal energy and a sink for excess carbon dioxide. All this suggests that the ocean plays a great role in shaping the climate and has a significant impact on the character of current climate change and its variability.

Understanding how large-scale ocean dynamics affect climate in response to external forcings, both natural and anthropogenic, is essential to form a more or less complete and clear picture of how climate will change in the future, depending on the nature of human economic activity and, in the long prospective, depending on astronomical factors. Even though in recent decades, due to the increased power of supercomputers and the development of highly complex Earth system models, a large number of studies have been carried out related to the assessment of the ocean’s role in shaping the climate and its changes, plenty of unresolved and controversial problems still remain that require further consideration. Such problems include, for example, assessing the global warming impact on the large-scale ocean dynamics, estimating the effects of radiative feedback and ocean thermal inertia uncertainties on interannual, decadal and multidecadal climate variability, studying the role of sea surface temperature in the tropics in shaping the climate of middle and high latitudes, in particular the arctic amplification, etc.

This Special Issue showcases research related to assessing the impact of large-scale ocean dynamics on the climate system response to both natural and human-made external forcings and, vice versa, estimating the effects of global warming on the ocean’s dynamical features. Studies discussing the results of numerical experiments with climate models of various complexities are also welcome. We invite you to publish articles related to the analysis of observational data on the state of the ocean and the use of new methods for processing these data, including artificial intelligence technologies.

We look forward to receiving manuscripts in consideration of all of the above.

Dr. Sergei Soldatenko
Prof. Dr. Nathan Paldor
Guest Editors

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• climate change and variability
• ocean dynamics
• climate system response
• numerical climate modeling: climate feedback
• climate sensitivity