Increased future ocean heat uptake constrained by Antarctic sea ice extent

Vogt, Linus; de Lavergne, Casimir; Sallée, Jean-Baptiste; Kwiatkowski, Lester; Frölicher, Thomas L.; Terhaar, Jens

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1453-2025

Articles | Volume 16, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1453-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1453-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 16, issue 5

Research article

| Highlight paper

|

02 Oct 2025

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 02 Oct 2025

Increased future ocean heat uptake constrained by Antarctic sea ice extent

Linus Vogt, Casimir de Lavergne, Jean-Baptiste Sallée, Lester Kwiatkowski, Thomas L. Frölicher, and Jens Terhaar

Data sets

Preprocessed CMIP6 and observational data for "Increased future ocean heat uptake constrained by Antarctic sea ice extent" L. Vogt https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15693981

Sea ice concentration daily gridded data from 1978 to present derived from satellite observations Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.3cd8b812

loud properties global gridded monthly and daily data from 1982 to present derived from satellite observations Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and Climate Data Store (CDS) https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.68653055

Antarctic Sea Ice Reconstructions R. Fogt https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5709767.v1

Data for ERA5 radiative kernels H. Huang and Y. Huang https://doi.org/10.17632/vmg3s67568.4

Bootstrap Sea Ice Concentrations from Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I-SSMIS J. C. Comiso https://doi.org/10.5067/X5LG68MH013O

Short summary

Future projections of global ocean heat uptake (OHU) strongly differ between climate models. Here, we reveal an observational constraint on future OHU based on historical Antarctic sea ice extent observations. This emergent constraint is based on a coupling between sea ice, deep- and surface ocean temperatures, and cloud feedback. It implies an upward correction of 2024–2100 global OHU projections by up to 14 % and suggests that previous constraints have underestimated future warming.