Abstract

Climate change and global warming in the Southern Ocean

Ocean warming is the long term increase in temperature of the ocean beyond the seasonal time scale. As the Ocean covers 70% of the Earth’s surface, changes in ocean’s state will have a large impact on the climate system of the earth through storage of heat and carbon dioxide in the ocean. More than 93% of the enhanced heating took place since the 1970s due to the greenhouse effect resulted from human activities out of which a large part of the heat has been absorbed by the ocean, affecting the surface and Deep Ocean. The gases like carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor all of which act as a blanket and trap the long wave radiation resulting in global temperature rise leading to global climate change. To understand the role of ocean in the climate system, it is essential to quantify the ocean’s ability to store and transport heat. The amount of heat entering the ocean surface from the atmosphere, the net air-ice-sea heat flux, and the heat stored and transported by ocean water masses are necessary for understanding ocean warming. Though the heat exchange rates are higher in tropical latitudes, global warming of oceans at higher latitudes also is found to have a vital role in the global climate system.