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Abstract Mass loss from the Antarctic ice sheet is projected to continue over the coming century. The resultant sea level change will have a regional pattern that evolves over time as the ocean adjusts. Accurate estimation of this evolution is crucial for local communities. Current state-of-the-art climate models typically do not couple ice sheets to the atmosphere–ocean system, and the impact of ice sheet melt has often been studied by injecting meltwater at the model ocean surface. However, observational evidence suggests that most Antarctic meltwater enters the ocean at depth through ice shelf basal melt. A previous study has demonstrated that the regional sea level pattern at a given time depends on meltwater injection depth. Here, we introduce a 2.5-layer model to investigate this dependence and develop a theory for the associated adjustment mechanisms. We find mechanisms consistent with previous literature on the ocean adjustment to changes in forcing, whereby a slower Rossby wave response off the eastern boundary follows a fast response from the western boundary current and Kelvin waves. We demonstrate that faster baroclinic Rossby waves near the surface than at depth explain the injection depth dependence of the adjustment in the 2.5-layer model. The identified Rossby wave mechanism may contribute to the dependence of the ocean’s transient adjustment on meltwater injection depth in more complex models. This work highlights processes that could cause errors in the projection of the time-varying pattern of sea level rise using surface meltwater input to represent Antarctica’s freshwater forcing. Significance StatementSea level rise is expected to be larger in some locations than in others. Accurate projections of the pattern of sea level change, which changes in time as the ocean adjusts, are essential information for local communities. One of the factors that leads to uncertainty in the local sea level change due to Antarctic melt is the depth at which this meltwater is input into an ocean model. We propose a mechanism for a faster response of sea level around the basin when meltwater is injected at the ocean surface compared to when it is injected well below the surface. This mechanism has implications for projections of the regional sea level response to Antarctic melt. 

Abstract Radiative forcing drives warming in the Earth system, leading to changes in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and associated radiative feedbacks. The link between changes in the top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) net radiative flux and SST patterns, known as the “pattern effect”, is typically diagnosed by studying the response of atmosphere-only models to SST perturbations. In this work, we diagnose the pattern effect through response theory, by performing idealized warming perturbation experiments from unperturbed data alone. First, by studying the response at short time scales, where the response is dominated by atmospheric variability, we recover results that agree with the literature. Second, by extending the framework to longer time scales, we capture coupled interactions between the slow ocean component and the atmosphere, yielding a novel “sensitivity map” quantifying the response of the net radiative flux to SST perturbations in the coupled system. Here, feedbacks are captured by a spatiotemporal response operator, rather than time-independent maps as in traditional studies. Both formulations skillfully reconstruct changes in externally forced simulations and provide practical strategies for climate studies. The key distinction lies in their perspectives on climate feedbacks. The first formulation, closely aligned with prediction tasks, follows the traditional view in which slow variables, such as SSTs, exert a one-way influence on fast variables. The second formulation broadens this perspective by incorporating spatiotemporal interactions across state variables. This alternative approach explores how localized SST perturbations can alter the coupled dynamics, leading to temperature changes in remote areas and further impacting the radiative fluxes at later times. 

Abstract Regional patterns of sea level rise are affected by a range of factors including glacial melting, which has occurred in recent decades and is projected to increase in the future, perhaps dramatically. Previous modeling studies have typically included fluxes from melting glacial ice only as a surface forcing of the ocean or as an offline addition to the sea surface height fields produced by climate models. However, observational estimates suggest that the majority of the meltwater from the Antarctic Ice Sheet actually enters the ocean at depth through ice shelf basal melt. Here we use simulations with an ocean general circulation model in an idealized configuration. The results show that the simulated global sea level change pattern is sensitive to the depth at which Antarctic meltwater enters the ocean. Further analysis suggests that the response is dictated primarily by the steric response to the depth of the meltwater flux. 

Abstract Ocean warming patterns are a primary control on regional sea level rise and transient climate sensitivity. However, controls on these patterns in both observations and models are not fully understood, complicated as they are by their dependence on the “addition” of heat to the ocean’s interior along background ventilation pathways and on the “redistribution” of heat between regions by changing ocean dynamics. While many previous studies attribute heat redistribution to changes in high-latitude processes, here we propose that substantial heat redistribution is explained by the large-scale adjustment of the geostrophic flow to warming within the pycnocline. We explore this hypothesis in the University of Victoria Earth System Model, estimating added heat using the transport matrix method. We find that throughout the midlatitudes, subtropics, and tropics, patterns of added and redistributed heat in the model are strongly anticorrelated (R≈ −0.75). We argue that this occurs because changes in ocean currents, acting across pre-existing temperature gradients, redistribute heat away from regions of strong passive heat convergence. Over broad scales, this advective response can be estimated from changes in upper-ocean density alone using the thermal wind relation and is linked to an adjustment of the subtropical pycnocline. These results highlight a previously unappreciated relationship between added and redistributed heat and emphasize the role that subtropical and midlatitude dynamics play in setting patterns of ocean heat storage. Significance StatementThe point of our study was to better understand the geographic pattern of ocean warming caused by human-driven climate change. Warming patterns are challenging to predict because they are sensitive both to how the ocean absorbs heat from the atmosphere and to how ocean currents change in response to increased emissions. We showed that these processes are not independent of one another: in many regions, changes in ocean currents reduce regional variations in the build-up of new heat absorbed from the atmosphere. This finding may help to constrain future projections of regional ocean warming, which matters because ocean warming patterns have a major influence on regional sea level rise, marine ecosystem degradation, and the rate of atmospheric warming. 

Abstract. Accurate estimation of changes in the global hydrological cycle over the historical record is important for model evaluation and understanding future trends. Freshwater flux trends cannot be accurately measured directly, so quantification of change often relies on ocean salinity trends. However, anthropogenic forcing has also induced ocean transport change, which imprints on salinity. We find that this ocean transport affects the surface salinity of the saltiest regions (the subtropics) while having little impact on the surface salinity in other parts of the globe. We present a method based on linear response theory which accounts for the regional impact of ocean circulation changes while estimating freshwater fluxes from ocean tracers. Testing on data from the Community Earth System Model large ensemble, we find that our method can recover the true amplification of freshwater fluxes, given thresholded statistical significance values for salinity trends. We apply the method to observations and conclude that from 1975–2019, the hydrological cycle has amplified by 5.04±1.27 % per degree Celsius of surface warming.