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During El Niño events, a strong tropics-wide warming of the free troposphere is observed (of order 1 K at 300 hPa). This warming plays an important role for the teleconnection processes associated with El Niño but it remains unclear what initiates this warming. Since convective quasi-equilibrium only holds in regions of deep convection, the strong free-tropospheric warming implies that the warmest surface waters (where atmospheric deep convection occurs) must warm during El Niño. We analyze the evolution of the oceanic mixed layer heat budget over El Niño events as function of sea surface temperature (SST). Data from the ERA5 and an unforced simulation of a coupled climate model both confirm that SSTs during an El Niño event increase at the high end of the SST distribution. The data show that this is due to an anomalous heat flux from the atmosphere into the ocean caused by a decrease in evaporation due anomalously weak low-level winds (i.e., relative to the wind speed observed in the domain of deep convection in the climatological base state). It is hypothesized that the more zonally symmetric circulation during El Niño is responsible for the weakening of low-level winds. The result of a substantial heat flux into the ocean in the domain of atmospheric deep convection (the opposite of the canonical heat flux out of the ocean into the atmosphere observed in the cold eastern Pacific) caused by a decrease in low-level wind speed implies that the prominent tropospheric warming results from mechanical forcing.

The coastal ocean contributes to regulating atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations by taking up carbon dioxide (CO₂) and releasing nitrous oxide (N₂O) and methane (CH₄). In this second phase of the Regional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes (RECCAP2), we quantify global coastal ocean fluxes of CO₂, N₂O and CH₄using an ensemble of global gap‐filled observation‐based products and ocean biogeochemical models. The global coastal ocean is a net sink of CO₂in both observational products and models, but the magnitude of the median net global coastal uptake is ∼60% larger in models (−0.72 vs. −0.44 PgC year⁻¹, 1998–2018, coastal ocean extending to 300 km offshore or 1,000 m isobath with area of 77 million km²). We attribute most of this model‐product difference to the seasonality in sea surface CO₂partial pressure at mid‐ and high‐latitudes, where models simulate stronger winter CO₂uptake. The coastal ocean CO₂sink has increased in the past decades but the available time‐resolving observation‐based products and models show large discrepancies in the magnitude of this increase. The global coastal ocean is a major source of N₂O (+0.70 PgCO₂‐e year⁻¹in observational product and +0.54 PgCO₂‐e year⁻¹in model median) and CH₄(+0.21 PgCO₂‐e year⁻¹in observational product), which offsets a substantial proportion of the coastal CO₂uptake in the net radiative balance (30%–60% in CO₂‐equivalents), highlighting the importance of considering the three greenhouse gases when examining the influence of the coastal ocean on climate.