These last few months have been a turbulent time to be an oceanographer, particularly one specialising in the vast Southern Ocean around Antarctica and its role in our climate. The media has been awash with stories of marine heatwaves across the northern hemisphere, the potential collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation by mid-century and the record-breaking deficit in Antarctic sea ice emerging this southern winter. Alongside heatwaves and bushfires in North America and southern Europe, flooding in China and South American winter temperatures above 38C, the climate has moved from a “future problem” to a “now problem” in the minds of many.
The global climate is one hugely complex interconnected system. While the Antarctic and Southern Ocean are far removed from our daily lives, they play an oversized role in this system and the future climate that concerns humanity now. “Global warming” is really “ocean warming”. The atmospheric temperature change, the 1.5C Paris target we are now perilously near to exceeding, really is only a few percent of our total excess trapped heat. Almost all the rest is in the ocean and it is around Antarctica that it is predominantly taken up. How this uptake may change in the future as winds, temperatures and ice shift is a critical scientific, and human, question.
