Multicentury climate warming slows meridional overturning circulation,
sequestering nutrients in the deep ocean and reducing uptake of
anthropogenic CO2
Abstract
Under a high-end emission scenario to the year 2300, climate warming
drives a drastic slowdown in the ocean’s meridional overturning
circulation, with a cessation of Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW)
production and North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) formation reduced to 5
Sv. In conjunction with regionally enhanced biological production and
upper-ocean nutrient trapping in the Southern Ocean, this deep
circulation slowdown drives long-term sequestration of nutrients and
dissolved inorganic carbon in the deep ocean, but also greatly reduces
the ocean’s capacity to take up heat and anthropogenic CO from the
atmosphere, prolonging peak warmth climate conditions. Surface nutrients
(N, P, and Si) are steadily depleted driving down biological
productivity and weakening the biological pump, which transfers carbon
to the ocean interior. Ocean dissolved oxygen concentrations steadily
decline, with the potential for anoxia eventually developing in some
regions. This Community Earth System Model (CESM) simulation did not
include active ice sheet dynamics, but the strong climate warming
simulated would lead to large freshwater discharge from the Antarctic
and Greenland ice sheets. This would further stratify the polar regions,
potentially leading to complete shutdown of the meridional overturning
circulation. The impacts of this would be catastrophic as the hothouse
Earth climate conditions could be extended for thousands of years, with
widespread ocean anoxia developing, driving a mass extinction event.