Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 29, 2025

Author Spotlight: Unveiling Plankton Response to Climate Change Through Time-Series Data and Artistic Expression
Published on: July 28, 2023
Drivers and distribution of global ocean heat uptake over the last half century
Maurice F Huguenin1,2,3, Ryan M Holmes4,5,6,7, Matthew H England4,8
1Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia. m.huguenin-virchaux@unsw.edu.au.
Abstract:
Since the 1970s, the ocean has absorbed almost all of the additional energy in the Earth system due to greenhouse warming. However, sparse observations limit our knowledge of where ocean heat uptake (OHU) has occurred and where this heat is stored today. Here, we equilibrate a reanalysis-forced ocean-sea ice model, using a spin-up that improves on earlier approaches, to investigate recent OHU trends basin-by-basin and associated separately with surface wind trends, thermodynamic properties (temperature, humidity and radiation) or both. Wind and thermodynamic changes each explain ~ 50% of global OHU, while Southern Ocean forcing trends can account for almost all of the global OHU. This OHU is enabled by cool sea surface temperatures and sensible heat gain when atmospheric thermodynamic properties are held fixed, while downward longwave radiation dominates when winds are fixed. These results address long-standing limitations in multidecadal ocean-sea ice model simulations to reconcile estimates of OHU, transport and storage.
Related Concept Videos
Global Climate Change
Quantifying Heat
Heat Flow and Specific Heat
Isothermal Processes
An ideal gas can also undergo isothermal expansion or compression.
For example, consider 1 mole of an ideal gas inside an isolated cylinder at initial volume V...
Radiation: Applications
The average...
Mechanisms of Heat Transfer
Conduction, accounting for approximately 3% of body heat loss at rest, is the process of exchanging heat between molecules of two materials in direct contact. This can result in both heat loss and gain. For instance, when the body is submerged in water, which conducts heat 20 times more effectively than air, it can either lose or gain significant...

