The Southern Ocean as the climate's freight train – driving ongoing global warming under zero-emission scenarios with ACCESS-ESM1.5

Chamberlain, Matthew A.; Ziehn, Tilo; Law, Rachel M.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-21-3053-2024

Articles | Volume 21, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-21-3053-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-21-3053-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 12

Research article

|

01 Jul 2024

Research article |

| 01 Jul 2024

The Southern Ocean as the climate's freight train – driving ongoing global warming under zero-emission scenarios with ACCESS-ESM1.5

Matthew A. Chamberlain, Tilo Ziehn, and Rachel M. Law

Data sets

Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, Phase 6 World Climate Research Program https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/cmip6/

Zero Emissions Commitment Model Intercomparison Project, Globally averaged data and EMIC data repository M. Eby http://terra.seos.uvic.ca/ZEC

Short summary

This paper explores the climate processes that drive increasing global average temperatures in zero-emission commitment (ZEC) simulations despite decreasing atmospheric CO₂. ACCESS-ESM1.5 shows the Southern Ocean to continue to warm locally in all ZEC simulations. In ZEC simulations that start after the emission of more than 1000 Pg of carbon, the influence of the Southern Ocean increases the global temperature.