A lesser-known type of ozone has been found as playing a significant role in heating the Southern Ocean, one of Earth's primary cooling systems, according to a new study.
According to new research, fluctuations in ozone levels in the upper and lower atmosphere were responsible for roughly a third of the warming observed in ocean waters adjacent to Antarctica in the second half of the twentieth century.
Ozone in the Southern Ocean
ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP via Getty Images
Ozone is a gas that is made up of three oxygen atoms. Many types of research have been conducted to investigate ozone in the stratosphere and its function in protecting people from the sun's damaging UV radiation.
Ozone is detrimental to people in the troposphere, which is closer to ground level.
According to a new study headed by UC Riverside researchers, this relatively low-level ozone is providing far more heat to the Southern Ocean than scientists previously thought.
"People haven't given much attention to tropospheric ozone in regards to ocean heat uptake in the past, but based on our models, they should," said Wei Liu, principal author of the new study and a UCR climate scientist.
The oceans absorb the overwhelming bulk of the carbon and warmth that people emit into the atmosphere when they burn fossil fuels.
The Southern Ocean, commonly known as the Antarctic Ocean, gathers one-third of all extra carbon in the world's atmosphere, as well as an estimated 75% of all surplus heat gathered by the world's seas, as per ScienceDaily.
It is critical to comprehend this warmth to regulate it.
Increased ocean warming is contributing to the well-documented issue of rising sea levels.
Liu and an international group of specialists investigated weather simulation studies using variations in ozone concentrations between 1955 and 2000 to advance this knowledge.
These climate models separated stratospheric and tropospheric ozone from other impacts on Southern Ocean temperatures, allowing them to examine how each component affects temperatures.
Although both stratospheric and tropospheric ozone influence Southern Ocean warming, the researchers discovered that the latter contribute significantly more.
Sea ice particularly includes a large section of the ocean surface in the polar regions, helps to regulate world temperatures by reflecting incoming solar energy.
Reduced sea-ice coverage is thus projected to increase greenhouse-gas-induced global warming.
Changes in sea ice also have an impact on energy exchanges between the ocean and the atmosphere, carbon absorption by the ocean, ecosystems, and thermohaline oceanic circulation.
Constant satellite data, which began at the end of the 1970s, show that Arctic sea ice has decreased significantly during the satellite period, which is consistent with the global warming trend.
In contrast, tiny but rising trends have been recorded in the Southern Hemisphere, particularly between 1979 and 2014.
Furthermore, while climate models can substantially recreate reported Arctic sea-ice declines, the majority of them fail to reflect the Antarctic sea-ice increase from 1979 to 2014.
"For more than a decade, climatologists have been confused by observed Antarctic sea-ice extension and model-observation mismatch," said lead author Eui-Seok Chung of the Korea Polar Research Institute, as per Phys.org.
It is critical to track long-term changes in global sea ice and verify that the physical mechanisms that cause such changes are appropriately represented in climate estimation techniques.
