Fig. 4: Simulated temporal changes in water age and apparent oxygen utilization (AOU) in the North Atlantic from the 2010s to the 2090s. | Nature Communications

Fig. 4: Simulated temporal changes in water age and apparent oxygen utilization (AOU) in the North Atlantic from the 2010s to the 2090s.

From: North Atlantic ventilation change over the past three decades is potentially driven by climate change

Fig. 4

a, b Display the Kernel Smoothing density estimates of the changes in water age (Δage, years) and AOU (ΔAOU, μmol/kg) in the North Atlantic, comparing data from the 2010s to the 2090s across individual models and the multi-model mean. Panels c, d show the multi-model mean of the zonal average for Δage and ΔAOU in the same region. In these analyses, the ideal age is used to detect ventilation changes; it functions like a “clock," resetting to zero at the sea surface and increasing by one day per day in the sub-surface layers. Note that ideal age data in MRI-ESM-2-0 and dissolved oxygen concentration data in NorESM2-MM were not accessible for the SSP5-8.5 scenario during the course of our study (accessed in August of 2025, https://esgf-metagrid.cloud.dkrz.de/search/cmip6-dkrz/).

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