A Haumann

A Solomon

AG Pauling

C Bitz

C Böning

CL Parkinson

D Pierce

D Roemmich

D Stone

D Yang

DW Pierce

HD Pritchard

HT Banks

J Fyfe

JC Fyfe

John C. Fyfe

K Armour

LM Polvani

M Previdi

M Sigmond

MEgrave Gagné

Nathan P. Gillett

NC Swart

Neil C. Swart

NL Bindoff

NM Freeman

NP Gillett

NS Lovenduski

PJ Durack

PR Gent

R Abernathey

S Aoki

S Khatiwala

S Levitus

Sarah T. Gille

ST Gille

T Fan

TL Frölicher

TP Barnett

V Zunz

VK Arora

English

Crossref

Recent Southern Ocean warming and freshening driven by greenhouse gas emissions and ozone depletion

The Southern Ocean has, on average, warmed and freshened over the past several decades. As a primary global sink for anthropogenic heat and carbon, to understand changes in the Southern Ocean is directly relevant to predicting the future evolution of the global climate system. However, the drivers of these changes are poorly understood, owing to sparse observational sampling, large amplitude internal variability, modelling uncertainties and the competing influence of multiple forcing agents. Here we construct an observational synthesis to quantify the temperature and salinity changes over the Southern Ocean and combine this with an ensemble of co-sampled climate model simulations. Using a detection and attribution analysis, we show that the observed changes are inconsistent with the internal variability or the response to natural forcing alone. Rather, the observed changes are primarily attributable to human-induced greenhouse gas increases, with a secondary role for stratospheric ozone depletion. Physically, the simulated changes are primarily driven by surface fluxes of heat and freshwater. The consistency between the observed changes and our simulations provides increased confidence in the ability of climate models to simulate large-scale thermohaline change in the Southern Ocean

Recent Southern Ocean warming and freshening driven by greenhouse gas emissions and ozone depletion

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