Study examines Southern Ocean warming and its climatic impacts

The mid-to-high latitude Southern Ocean (30°S southwards) features prevailing westerly winds, the strongest mean sea-surface winds on Earth, which draw up ocean water from below 2–3 km in a wide circumpolar ring. This circulation system exerts a huge influence on climate under greenhouse warming, because the upwelled water was last in contact with the atmosphere hundreds of years earlier and once brought to the surface, absorbs a vast amount of anthropogenic heat and carbon from the atmosphere.