Oceans and climate

Perturbations in ocean chemistry and ocean currents have occurred on all time and space scales. Many such perturbations are associated with fundamental changes in climatic conditions. Speaking of current climate change trends, the oceans play a fundamental role in mitigating the effects of our greenhouse gases. For example, the oceans have absorbed over 90% of the excess heat resulting from anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions and they take up roughly a third of all CO2 emitted by humans. The current climate crisis would be much worst without the oceans.

This area of research links researchers from various departments interested in understanding how the oceans are affected by climate, and how the oceans affect climate. Many of the researchers working on this topical are based in the Earth Sciences and Engineering department and the Physics department.

This research includes chemical and geological studies, climate reconstructions from the interpretation of various paleo-proxies, observations and modelling of ice sheets, development and use of global coupled climate and earth system models, the design of idealized geophysical fluid dynamics numerical experiments and the in-situ collection of data in the ocean