2026/05/28 by Stefan Rahmstorf, Jan Jendrkowiak, Ruijian Gou +3 · 1 voice
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Oceanographic and Atmospheric Processes #Climate variability and models #Arctic and Antarctic ice dynamics
paper · doi:10.1029/2025gl118383
openalex publication_date 2026/05/28 · openalex created_date 2026/05/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Abstract The northern Atlantic south of Greenland and Iceland is the only part of the world which has cooled significantly since the 19th Century both in the atmosphere and ocean. The oceanic cooling is widely assumed to be a result of reduced ocean heat transport into this region. However, some studies have suggested it could be due to increased net heat loss at the sea surface. Here we use observation‐based reanalysis data of ocean heat content and surface flux changes in this region to show that the observed cooling trend cannot be explained by surface heat flux changes, and that multidecadal heat content variations are generally larger and more tightly correlated with ocean heat transport than with surface heat flux variability.