Circumpolar surface temperatures image: Earth live (click for live updates)
Causes
- A brief history of climate change: who knew what, when
- What causes climate change?
- Would the climate be warming without humans?
- Is it just a cycle? (Earth’s wobbly orbit)
- Sunspots & solar activity
- Land use: agriculture & cities
- Volcanoes
- Ocean currents
- Black carbon & ash
- Albedo effect
- Hydrogen
- Greenhouse gases & how they work
- – Carbon dioxide & the carbon cycle
- – Methane: biogenic (mostly cows) & ‘natural’ gas
- – Nitrous oxide (mostly agriculture)
- – Clouds & water vapour
- – Ozone
- – Man-made industrial chemicals
- – Aerosol pollution
- How to start an Ice Age!
- What’s in a name?
Home > Climate wiki > What causes climate change? > Ocean currents
Summary
- Just like us, the Earth has a circulatory system. Instead of blood, oceanic currents transport heat, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nutrients around the planet.
- The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) (Videos 1 & 2) is so powerful that it moves an area equivalent to the South Island one metre every second. It’s warming faster than the global ocean as a whole, threatening the world’s largest ice sheet and disrupting global ocean currents, which in turn affect global weather systems. Recent modelling and observations shows it is slowing down.
As Antarctica melts, more freshwater flows into the oceans. This disrupts the sinking of cold, salty, oxygen-rich water to the bottom of the ocean. From there this water normally spreads northwards to ventilate the far reaches of the deep Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. But that could all come to an end soon. In our lifetimes. – England et al, 2023
Our new study has revealed that the Southern Ocean is changing, but in a different way to what we expected. We may have passed a tipping point and entered a new state defined by persistent sea ice decline, sustained by a newly discovered feedback loop…Antarctica is no longer the stable, frozen continent we once believed it to be. It is changing rapidly, and in ways that current climate models didn’t foresee. Until recently, those models assumed a warming world would increase precipitation and ice-melting, freshening surface waters and helping keep Antarctic sea ice relatively stable. That assumption no longer holds. – Silvano, July 2025
- The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) (Videos 3-5) is a conveyor belt for exchanging heat and nutrients across four of the five world’s major oceans. It’s now weaker than at any time in the past thousand years. 2024 research (this website) reveals the impacts on Aotearoa.The gyres that feed this current are failing:
Climate models suggest a reduction in AMOC strength of 32 ± 37% by 2100 (90% probability, Shared Socioeconomic Pathways 2-4.5 scenario. – Portman et al 2026
- Ocean currents played a significant role in how the current Ice Age started. They’re now changing due to warming temperatures and feedback effects.
- Perversely, the increasing frequency and intensification of upwelling in the Agulhas Current and East Australian Current is resulting in mass mortalities of fish, sharks, and other marine animals:
Extreme cold upwelling events that can result in mass mortality for diverse marine organisms are increasing in both frequency and intensity. – Lubitz et al, 2024
- The Copernicus Marine Service Ocean Climate Portal is an interactive user-friendly hub to help our understanding of the impact of climate change on our oceans.
Causes
- A brief history of climate change: who knew what, when
- What causes climate change?
- Would the climate be warming without humans?
- Is it just a cycle? (Earth’s wobbly orbit)
- Sunspots & solar activity
- Land use: agriculture & cities
- Volcanoes
- Ocean currents
- Black carbon & ash
- Albedo effect
- Hydrogen
- Greenhouse gases & how they work
- – Carbon dioxide & the carbon cycle
- – Methane: biogenic (mostly cows) & ‘natural’ gas
- – Nitrous oxide (mostly agriculture)
- – Clouds & water vapour
- – Ozone
- – Man-made industrial chemicals
- – Aerosol pollution
- How to start an Ice Age!
- What’s in a name?
Home > Climate wiki > What causes climate change? > Ocean currents
Summary
- Just like us, the Earth has a circulatory system. Instead of blood, oceanic currents transport heat, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nutrients around the planet.
- The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) (Videos 1 & 2) is so powerful that it moves an area equivalent to the South Island one metre every second. It’s warming faster than the global ocean as a whole, threatening the world’s largest ice sheet and disrupting global ocean currents, which in turn affect global weather systems. Recent modelling and observations shows it is slowing down.
As Antarctica melts, more freshwater flows into the oceans. This disrupts the sinking of cold, salty, oxygen-rich water to the bottom of the ocean. From there this water normally spreads northwards to ventilate the far reaches of the deep Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. But that could all come to an end soon. In our lifetimes. – England et al, 2023
Our new study has revealed that the Southern Ocean is changing, but in a different way to what we expected. We may have passed a tipping point and entered a new state defined by persistent sea ice decline, sustained by a newly discovered feedback loop…Antarctica is no longer the stable, frozen continent we once believed it to be. It is changing rapidly, and in ways that current climate models didn’t foresee. Until recently, those models assumed a warming world would increase precipitation and ice-melting, freshening surface waters and helping keep Antarctic sea ice relatively stable. That assumption no longer holds. – Silvano, July 2025
- The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) (Videos 3-5) is a conveyor belt for exchanging heat and nutrients across four of the five world’s major oceans. It’s now weaker than at any time in the past thousand years. 2024 research (this website) reveals the impacts on Aotearoa.The gyres that feed this current are failing:
Climate models suggest a reduction in AMOC strength of 32 ± 37% by 2100 (90% probability, Shared Socioeconomic Pathways 2-4.5 scenario. – Portman et al 2026
- Ocean currents played a significant role in how the current Ice Age started. They’re now changing due to warming temperatures and feedback effects.
- Perversely, the increasing frequency and intensification of upwelling in the Agulhas Current and East Australian Current is resulting in mass mortalities of fish, sharks, and other marine animals:
Extreme cold upwelling events that can result in mass mortality for diverse marine organisms are increasing in both frequency and intensity. – Lubitz et al, 2024
- The Copernicus Marine Service Ocean Climate Portal is an interactive user-friendly hub to help our understanding of the impact of climate change on our oceans.
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Earth is viewed from a Spillhause projection, that is, the oceans surrounded by land, it becomes clear that the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) plays a pivotal role in global ocean circulation.
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The Southern Ocean is the formation site for much of the dense water that fills the deep ocean, sequesters the majority of anthropogenic heat and carbon, and controls the flux of heat to Antarctica. – Bennetts et al, 2024
The strongest ocean current on Earth, the ACC encircles Antarctica and extends from the surface to the bottom of the ocean. It carries an estimated 165 million to 182 million cubic metres of water every second (a unit called a ‘Sverdrup’) from west to east, more than 100 times the flow of all the rivers on Earth, or the equivalent of pushing the entire South Island of New Zealand one metre every second. It helps to act as a planetary thermostat, keeping Antarctica cool (Fig. 3).
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Satellite view over Antarctica reveals a frozen continent surrounded by icy waters. The sea ice extent is in light blue. Moving northward, away from Antarctica, the water temperatures rise slowly at first and then rapidly across a sharp gradient. The ACC maintains this boundary. The two black lines indicate the long-term position of the southern and northern front of the ACC. Image: The Conversation
Like the Arctic Ocean, the Southern Ocean (where the current flows) has become warmer (we are now experiencing marine heat waves). The warmest water is deep and it’s undercutting the marine ice sheets and ice shelves around Antarctica that hold back ~30 million cubic kilometres of ice.
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Is the Southern Ocean about to have its own ‘Day After Tomorrow’moment? The authors of the paper quoted below explain how these changes would profoundly alter the ocean’s overturning of heat, freshwater, oxygen, carbon and nutrients, with impacts felt throughout the global ocean for centuries to come.
If the Antarctic overturning slows down, nutrient-rich seawater will build up on the seafloor, five kilometres below the surface. These nutrients will be lost to marine ecosystems at or near the surface, damaging fisheries.
Changes in the overturning circulation could also mean more heat gets to the ice, particularly around West Antarctica, the area with the greatest rate of ice mass loss over the past few decades. This would accelerate global sea-level rise.
An overturning slowdown would also reduce the ocean’s ability to take up carbon dioxide, leaving more greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. And more greenhouse gases means more warming, making matters worse.
Put simply, a slowing or collapse of the overturning circulation would change our climate and marine environment in profound and potentially irreversible ways.
The signs of melting around the edges of Antarctica are very clear, with increasingly large volumes of freshwater flowing into the ocean and making nearby waters less salty and therefore less dense. And that’s all that’s needed to slow the overturning circulation. Denser water sinks, lighter water does not….
…We ran three different experiments, one where conditions remained unchanged from the 1990s; a second forced by projected changes in temperature and wind; and a third run also including projected changes in meltwater from Antarctica and Greenland.
In this way we could separate the effects of changes in winds and warming, from changes due to ice melt.
The findings were striking. The model projects the overturning circulation around Antarctica will slow by more than 40% over the next three decades, driven almost entirely by pulses of meltwater. – England et al
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Explains how the latest research (July 2025) shows why sea ice around Antarctica is rapidly declining, and how this impacts currents.
Since 2006, strong, full-depth ocean warming has occurred south of the Chatham Islands at around 5x the global rate because of the ocean currents moving 120km west. – NIWA, 2024
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July 2026: Tom Harris, a climate science writer, explains in plain English the recent research papers (links below) outlining the complex mechanisms that influence how the AMOC has operated over the past several million years, and why there may be a ‘backstop’ that could slow the degree to which the AMOC may collapse.
April 2026: Carbon Brief published an excellent storymap: Is global warming tipping key Atlantic ocean currents towards ‘collapse’?
The transfer of heat from ocean to atmosphere is at the heart of one of the most important components of Earth’s climate — a system of currents that snakes across the entire length of the Atlantic Ocean and transports warm water from the tropics to high northern latitudes. Known by the unwieldy name of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), this network of currents affects weather conditions for billions of people around the world. It’s the reason that north-western Europe is relatively mild in the winter and much warmer than Labrador in Canada, which is at a similar latitude. – Kalvelage, June 2025
A full AMOC collapse would be a massive, planetary-scale disaster. We really want to prevent this from happening. In other words: we are talking about risk analysis and disaster prevention. This is not about being 100% or even just 50% sure that the AMOC will pass its tipping point this century; the issue is that we’d like to be 100% sure that it won’t. That the IPCC only has “medium confidence” that it will not happen this century is anything but reassuring, and the studies discussed here, which came after the 2021 IPCC report, point to a much larger risk than previously thought. – Rhamstorf, April 2025
The AMOC is literally a conveyor belt for exchanging heat and nutrients across four of the five world’s major oceans. The process begins in the Labrador Sea. A major part of this current includes the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe warmer than the east coast of the United States. Video 3 explains how it works and why it’s so important.
Video 5 is a 3D animation of the flow and eddies as the current moves around the Atlantic. Recent (2024) research reveals the impacts on Aotearoa (News; this website).
The current, which moves nearly 20 million cubic metres of water per second, is driven in part by the formation of Arctic sea ice each year. When ocean water freezes, it leaves salt behind, making the surrounding water denser and heavier, so it sinks. The scale of sea ice formation was so large that until recently, the sinking salty water is one of the the world’s largest waterfalls (the largest is around Antarctica, discussed above).
However, less sea ice is forming in the Arctic every year. The Greenland ice sheet is also melting at a record-breaking pace, along with glaciers and permafrost in the lands surrounding the Arctic Ocean. Together, this is disgorging ever-increasing amounts of freshwater into the ocean. This means that less salt and more freshwater is being added to the Arctic ocean. The result? The mechanism that drives AMOC is disappearing. The current is now weaker than at any time in the past thousand years (Video 6).-
Stefan Rahmstorf, Professor of Physics of the Oceans presented a letter by 44 AMOC and tipping point experts to the Icelandic climate minister Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson: recent science suggests the risk has been greatly underestimated.
The last time the current shut down was at the end of the last glacial maximum (LGM) leading to abrupt cooling across much of Europe (‘Younger Dryas’) with an unstable climate and wild weather globally for several thousand years. The climate is now warming far faster than at the end of the LGM. Research in 2023 indicates it will slow down this century to the point where it will have a powerful influence on global weather systems. By 2025, global insurance companies began to take this very seriously.
For updated monitoring and research, see the RAPID project.
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More information
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Thermo means temperature and haline means salt. Cold water is denser than warm water, so it sinks. Adding salt makes it even more dense, so it sinks faster.
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Glacials: are shorter much colder Epochs (thousands of years) that happen during Ice Ages, when glaciers and ice sheets extend out over continents. The last glacial Epoch was the Pleistocene, which began 120,000 years ago. Because the coldest part of this Epoch (and therefore the maximum extent the ice sheets and glaciers reached) was from ~26,500-19,500 years ago, it’s called the last glacial maximum, commonly written as ‘LGM’.Ice Ages: are long events (millions of years) in geological time called Periods, when there’s at least one major ice sheet on the planet. An ice sheet is defined as an area 50,0002 km or more. As Greenland and Antarctica still have much larger ice sheets than this, we are still in an Ice Age called the Quaternary Period. Click here to see more (links to a page on this site).
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Younger Dryas: ~12,800 years ago thousands of cubic kilometres of icy water and icebergs from Lake Agassiz (Fig. 4) abruptly poured into the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. This along with other mechanisms effectively switched off the North Atlantic’s circulation system, chilling the Northern Hemisphere. Winter temperatures in northern Europe plummeted by as much as 22°C until ~11,500 years ago, after which the mild global warming trend continued until temperatures stabilised.
The volume of water released does not seem to have had a significant impact on the overall rate of sea-level rise, probably because the abrupt cooling meant glaciers and ice caps started to expand again, locking away the excess water. This highlights some of the complex feedback effects of abrupt warming.
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The term ‘climate forcing’ comes from ‘radiative forcing’ or RF, which is the difference between the amount of solar energy reaching Earth’s atmosphere and the amount that escapes. If more solar energy escapes than arrives, the planet cools. Conversely, if less energy escapes than gets in, the planet warms.
Different climate forcings each determine how much solar energy arrives and escapes.
- Natural Forcings are those that happen through natural changes.
- Anthropogenic Forcings are those due to human activities.
Click here to learn about the main forcings and how they work (links to a page on this site).
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- 2026: Rahmstorf et al; Multidecadal Atlantic “Warming Hole” Heat Content Variations Are Caused by Ocean Heat Transport, Not by Surface Fluxes, Geophysical Research Letters 53 | 11 (Open access)
- 2026; Jang et al; The potential role of Arctic seaway expansion in driving the Mid-Pleistocene Transition Nature Communications Earth Environment 7 | 449 (open access)
- 2026: Dörr et al; The Arctic overturning circulation: transformations, pathways and timescales, EGU Ocean Science article (open access)
- 2026; Harris (Plain English article on the Jang and Dörr papers) The Barents Sea – Architect of the Ice Age and potential AMOC Backstop
- 2026; Lanham et al. Poleward migration of warm Circumpolar Deep Water towards Antarctica. Nature Communication Earth Environment 7 | 371
- 2026: Thresher et al; Millennial-scale Atlantic overturning circulation led by the Southern Ocean, Nature Geoscience 19 pp 520-525 (Open access)
- 2026: Lenain et al; An unprecedented view of ocean currents from geostationary satellites Nature Geoscience 19 pp 526-533 (Open access)
- 2026: Portmann et al; Observational constraints project a ~50% AMOC weakening by the end of this century, Science Advances 12|16 (open access)
- The Guardian ‘plain English article: Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought
- 2026: Nian et al; Collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation would lead to substantial oceanic carbon release and additional global warming, Nature Communications Earth & Environment 7 | 295 (open access)
- 2026: van Westen & Dijkstra; Abrupt Gulf Stream path changes are a precursor to a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, Nature Communications Earth & Environment 7|197 (open access)
- 2026: Wu et al; Zonally asymmetric changes in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current strength over the past million years Nature Geoscience 19 pp201-208 (open access)
- 2026: Joh et al; Evolving synchronization of the Gulf Stream and Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension in a changing climate, Science Advances 12 | 6
- 2026: Wharton et al; Relatively warm deep-water formation persisted in the Last Glacial Maximum, Nature 650 pp116-122 (Open access)
- 2025: Gwyther et al; What Controls the Formation of Antarctic Bottom Water at Cape Darnley, East Antarctica? Geophysical Research Letters 52 |24 (Open access)
- 2025: Rintoul et al; Antarctic Bottom Water in a changing climate, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 09 December (Open access)
- 2025: Purich et al; Southern Annular Mode dynamics, projections and impacts in a changing climate, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 02 December
- Plain English (SAEF): Southern Annular Mode in most positive state in 1,000 years, review finds
- 2025: Yi et al; Future mesoscale horizontal stirring in polar oceans intensified by sea ice decline, Nature climate Change 15 pp1315-1323 (Open access)
- 2025: Ren et al; Equatorial Atlantic mid-depth warming indicates Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slowdown, Nature Communicaions Earth & Environment 6| 819 (Open access)
- 2025: Kong et al; Intensifying precipitation over the Southern Ocean challenges reanalysis-based climate estimates – Insights from Macquarie Island’s 45-year record EGU/Weather and Climate Dynamics 6 |4 pp1643-1660 (Open access)
- Plain English (Radio NZ): Storms in the Southern Ocean are producing more rain – and the consequences could be global
- 2025: Xie et al; Southward shift of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current upstream of Drake Passage maintains a stable circumpolar transport, Nature Climate Change 15 pp1315-1323
- 2025: Williet et al; Earth system response to Heinrich events explained by a bipolar convection seesaw, Nature Geoscience 18 pp1159-1166 (Open access)
- 2025: Silvano et al; Rising surface salinity and declining sea ice: A new Southern Ocean state revealed by satellites, PNAS 122| 27 (Open access)
- 2025: Doddridge et al; Impacts of Antarctic summer sea-ice extremes PNAS Nexus 4|7 (Open access)
- 2025: Kalvelage; Is a monster web of ocean currents headed for collapse? The race is on to find out. Nature feature 18 June (Open access)
- 2025: Årthun et al; Atlantification drives recent strengthening of the Arctic overturning circulation, Science Advances 11 | 28
- 2025: Li & Liu; Weakened Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation causes the historical North Atlantic Warming Hole Nature Communications Earth & Environment 6 | 416 (Open access)
- 2025: Ong et al; Transient Antarctic Slope Current Response to Climate Change Including Meltwater, Geophysical Research Letters 21 May (Open access)
- Plain English: An uncertain future for the Antarctic Slope Current
- 2025: Petit et al; Coherence of the AMOC Over the Subpolar North Atlantic on Interannual to Multiannual Time Scales AGU 52 | 9 (Open access)
- 2025: Rahmstorf; FEATURE ARTICLE • Is the Atlantic Overturning Circulation Approaching a Tipping Point?, Oceanography 10 April (Open access)
- 2025: Grimmer et al; AMOC Modulates Ocean Heat Content During Deglaciations, Geophysical Research Letters (Open access)
- Plain English explanation Eos 14 April
- 2025: Mizobata et al; Ocean Response Along the East Antarctic Coastal Margin to the Southern Annular Mode, Geophysical Research Letters 15 March (Open access)
- 2025: van Westen et al; Collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation in a Strongly Eddying Ocean-Only Model, Geophysical Research Letters 24 March (Open access).
- 2025: Svensson, Dramatic Changes in the Greenland Sea, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, 18 March
- 2025: Sohal et al; Decline of Antarctic Circumpolar Current due to polar ocean freshening, Environmental Research Letters 20 | 3, 03 March (Open access)
- 2025: Yang et al; Onshore intensification of subtropical western boundary currents in a warming climate, Nature Climate Change 15 pp301-307 (Open Access)
- 2025: Schaumann & Asenjo; Weakening AMOC reduces ocean carbon uptake and increases the social cost of carbon, PNAS Research Article, 24 February
- 2025: Gupta; Climate change: AMOCalypse Now, The Journal / Chartered Insurance Institute
- 2024: Pontes & Menviel; Weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation driven by subarctic freshening since the mid-twentieth century, Nature Geoscience article 18 November.
- 2024: Bennetts et al; Closing the Loops on Southern Ocean Dynamics: From the Circumpolar Current to Ice Shelves and From Bottom Mixing to Surface Waves, Review of Geophysics 30 July (Open access)
- 2024: He et al; Common occurrences of subsurface heatwaves and cold spells in ocean eddies Nature 47 (Open access)
- 2024: Jing et al; A more quiescent deep ocean under global warming, Nature Climate Change 14 pp961-967 (Open access)
- 2024: Williams et al, Asymmetries in the Southern Ocean contribution to global heat and carbon uptake, Nature Climate Change 14 pp823-831 (Open access)
- 2024: Sutton & Roemmich; Southwest Pacific Ocean Warming Driven by Circulation Changes, Geophysical Research Letters AGU (Open access)
- Plain English: Unprecedented ocean change may impact key NZ fisheries (NIWA)
- 2024: Wharton et al; Deeper and stronger North Atlantic Gyre during the Last Glacial Maximum, Nature 3418 (Open access)
- Plain English explanation: The Atlantic Gulf Stream was unexpectedly strong during the last ice age
- 2024: Lauderdale; Ocean iron cycle feedbacks decouple atmospheric CO2 from meridional overturning circulation changes – Nature Communications 15 |553(Open access)
- Plain English explanation: Weaker ocean circulation could enhance CO2 buildup in the atmosphere – MIT News 8 July 2024
- 2024: Eaves et al; Coupled atmosphere-ocean response of the southwest Pacific to deglacial changes in Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 641, 1 September 2024 (Open access)
- Plain English explanation (this website): Weakening or collapse of a major Atlantic current has disrupted NZ’s climate in the past – and could do so again
- 2024: Liu et al; 2024: Wind-steered Eastern Pathway of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, Nature Geoscience 17 pp353-360
- 2024 Macha et al; Distinct Central and Eastern Pacific El Niño Influence on Antarctic Surface Mass Balance, Geophysical Research Letters 10 June (Open access)
- 2024: Lubitz et al: Climate change–driven cooling can kill marine megafauna at their distributional limits; Nature Climate Change Article 15 April
- 2024: Rahmstorf; Is the Atlantic Overturning Circulation Approaching a Tipping Point? Oceanography, April 10, 2024 (open access and a great summary of a complex system)
- 2024: Lamyet al; Five million years of Antarctic Circumpolar Current strength variability Nature 627 pp789-796
- Plain English summary Krajick; Key Ocean Current Contains a Warning on Climate, Columbia University
- 2024: van Westen et al., Physics-based early warning signal shows that AMOC is on tipping course, Science Advances 10, eadk1189 (Open access)
- 2024: Clark et al; Global and regional temperature change over the past 4.5 million years, Science 393 | 6685
- Plain English explanation 2024: Voosen; Dramatic shift in ice age rhythm pinned to carbon dioxide, Science 393 | 6685
- 2024: Evangelinos et al; Late Miocene onset of the modern Antarctic Circumpolar Current, Nature Geoscience 17, pp 165–170 (Open access)
- Plain English article: Evangelinos; Birth of the modern Antarctic Circumpolar Current – A modern-like Antarctic Circumpolar Current did not exist before the Late Miocene cooling.
- 2024: Ai et al; The southward migration of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current enhanced oceanic degassing of carbon dioxide during the last two deglaciations, Nature Communications Earth & Environment 5 | 58 (Open access)
- 2024: Peng et al; Collapsed upwelling projected to weaken ENSO under sustained warming beyond the twenty-first century, Nature Climate Change 14 pp815-822
- 2023: Ditleveson & Ditleveson; Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, Nature Communications 14 | 4254
- 2023: State of the Cryosphere – Two Degrees is Too High. International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), Stockholm, Sweden (PDF)
- 2023: Gunn et al; Recent reduced abyssal overturning and ventilation in the Australian Antarctic Basin; Nature Climate Change 13, pp537–544
- 2023: Zhang et al; Atmospheric and oceanic circulation altered by global mean sea-level rise, Nature Geoscience 16 pp321–327
- 2023: Li et al, Abyssal ocean overturning slowdown and warming driven by Antarctic meltwater, Nature 615 pp841–847
- 2023: Chen et al; Increased tropical South Pacific western boundary current transport over the past century, Nature Geoscience 16 pp590-596 (Open access)
- 2023: Falster et al; Forced changes in the Pacific Walker circulation over the past millennium, Nature Article 23 August 2023 (Open access)
- NSIDC (National Snow Ice Data Center): Quick Facts on Ice Sheets
- Marine Heat Waves: modelling and prediction
- 2022: Pinto et al; Interbasin and interhemispheric impacts of a collapsed Atlantic Overturning Circulation, Nature Climate Change 12, pp558-565
- 2022: Albuquerque et al; On the projected changes in New Zealand’s wave climate and its main drivers, New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research
- 2022: Li et al; Drivers of ocean warming in the western boundary currents of the Southern Hemisphere, Nature Climate Change 12 pp901-909
- 2022: Beech et al; Long-term evolution of ocean eddy activity in a warming world, Nature Climate Change 12 pp910-917
- 2022: Herraiz-Borreguero and Garabato; Poleward shift of Circumpolar Deep Water threatens the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, Nature Climate Change 12, pp728-734
- 2022: Watson; World’s largest ice sheet threatened by warm water surge, Nature News 12 August (plain English)
- 2022: Liu et al; Stratospheric ozone depletion and tropospheric ozone increases drive Southern Ocean interior warming. Nature Climate Change 12 pp365-372
- 2022: Seviour; Good ozone, bad ozone and the Southern Ocean. Nature Climate Change 12 pp316 -317
- 2021: Boers; Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, Nature Climate Change 11, pp680–688 (download PDF)
- 2021: Caesar et al; Current Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation weakest in last millennium, Nature Geoscience 6369
- Carbon Brief article explaining the research (open access)
- 2021: Boers; Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, Nature Climate Change 11, pp680–688
- 2021: Hausfather; The State of the Climate; Carbon Brief
- 2020: NIWA; Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment of selected taonga freshwater species| Technical Report Prepared for Te Wai Māori Trust
- 2020: McSweeny (Carbon Brief); Scientists shed light on human causes of North Atlantic’s ‘cold blob’
- 2020: Keil et al; Multiple drivers of the North Atlantic warming hole, Nature Climate Change 10, 667-671
- 2020: England et al; Tropical climate responses to projected Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice loss Nature Geoscience 13, 275–281
- 2020: Sigmond et al; Ongoing AMOC and related sea-level and temperature changes after achieving the Paris targets Nature Climate Change 10, 672-277
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- 2019 IPCC: The Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate: Summary for Policymakers
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- Rahmstorf at RealClimate online discussion forum: ‘If you doubt that the amoc has weakened read this’
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- 2017: Science ‘How Stuff Works’ The World’s Largest Waterfall Is Deep Underwater
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- 2011: NASA; Thermohaline Circulation using Improved Flow Field (animation)
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- 2002: Rahmstorf; Ocean circulation and climate during the past 120,000 years: Nature 419, 207–214

