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Amplified warming accelerates deoxygenation in the Arctic Ocean

Nature Climate Change volume 15, pages 859–865 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Overall ocean health depends critically on dissolved oxygen, which is increasingly impacted by global warming. The Arctic and subarctic regions are experiencing exceptionally rapid warming, known as Arctic amplification, yet its impact on oceanic oxygen remains poorly understood. Here we show that inflowing Atlantic Water (AW) drives deoxygenation in the upper eastern Arctic Ocean and the intermediate layers of the western Arctic Ocean at rates from −0.41 ± 0.17 to −0.47 ± 0.07 µmol kg−1 yr−1, six times the global mean. Amplified Arctic warming is the primary driver, significantly reducing oxygen solubility in the Arctic gateway regions. Rapid subduction and circulation of AW further transmit the deoxygenation signal into Arctic deeper layers, greatly threatening marine ecosystems. Our findings highlight the dominant role of warming Atlantic inflow in shaping the Arctic Ocean oxygen dynamics, indicating that ongoing temperature increases will perpetuate deoxygenation trends and underscoring the need for widespread attention.

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Fig. 1: Observation-based changes in dissolved oxygen in the Arctic Ocean.
Fig. 2: Decadal trends in oxygen concentration across different water masses in the Arctic Ocean.
Fig. 3: Decadal change in vertical oxygen concentration in the Canada Basin.
Fig. 4: Trends in Atlantic water temperature, salinity and oxygen saturation concentration along the pathway of Atlantic water inflow into the Arctic Ocean.

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Data availability

The data in the eastern Arctic Ocean and the subarctic Atlantic Ocean (including the Nordic Seas, Fram Strait, Barents Sea Opening, Nansen Basin and Amundsen Basin) can be downloaded from Global Ocean Data Analysis Project version 2 (GLODAPv2.2023, https://www.glodap.info/)52. The data in the western Arctic Ocean (including the Canada Basin) are derived from various sources (Extended Data Table 2), including GLODAPv2.2023, Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project at Woods Hole Oceanographic Data Center (WHODC, https://www2.whoi.edu/site/beaufortgyre/data/ctd-and-geochemistry/), and the Chinese National Arctic and Antarctic Data Center (NADC, https://datacenter.chinare.org.cn/data-center/dindex). The datasets of GLODAPv2.2023 and WHODC are publicly accessible through their website links, and the CHINARE dataset is available to authorized users upon login and request through the NADC website, as well as from the corresponding authors upon request. The integrated and gridded oxygen data product in the western Arctic Ocean can be downloaded from Mendeley Data at https://doi.org/10.17632/stf5xc7hb6.2 (ref. 74). The Atlantic water temperature and salinity data for Fig. 4 were obtained from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES, https://ocean.ices.dk/core/iroc). Figures containing maps (for example, Figs. 1a and 4g, Extended Data Figs. 1 and 2, as well as figures in Supplementary Information) were generated using the m_map toolbox (v.1.4m, publicly available at https://www-old.eoas.ubc.ca/~rich/map.html) in the Matlab environment. High-resolution bathymetry and coastline basemaps were downloaded from ETOPO (v.2022, 60 arc-second resolution, publicly available at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/etopo-global-relief-model) and GSHHS (v.2.3.7, publicly available at https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/shorelines/data/gshhs/). Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Ocean Negative Carbon Emissions (ONCE) Program. We thank the many contributors to the datasets of GLODAP, CHINARE and Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project as well as other research vessels and crews that contributed to the data synthesis in this study. We particularly thank the Chinese National Arctic and Antarctic Data Center for providing the CHINARE data. This work was also funded by National Key Research and Development Program of China grants 2019YFA0607000 (X.C.) and 2023YFC3108102 (Y.W., D.Q.); National Natural Science Foundation of China grants 42176230 (D.Q.) and 42376251 (Y.Z.); Fujian Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China grant 2022J06026 (D.Q.), 2024 International Cooperation Seed Funding Project for China’s Ocean Decade Actions grant GHZZ3702840002024020000028 (Y.W.), and Shanghai Frontiers Science Center of Polar Science grant S002024-13 (Y.W.). D.Q. was supported by the National Youth Talent Program of China and the Special Professorship of the National Major Talent Engineering of China. We thank L. Cheng from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Q. Shu from the First Institute of Oceanography MNR for insightful discussions regarding oxygen data collection, quality control and Atlantification, as well as X. Ma and Y. Liu from Jimei University for assistance in figure editing.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Polar and Marine Research Institute, Jimei University, Xiamen, China

    Yingxu Wu, Zijia Zheng, Wanqin Zhong, Xu Yuan, Chenglong Li, Yanpei Zhuang, Xiang Gao, Liqi Chen & Di Qi

  2. Key Laboratory of Global Change and Marine-Atmospheric Chemistry, Third Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Xiamen, China

    Yingxu Wu, Hongmei Lin, Liqi Chen & Di Qi

  3. Key Laboratory of Polar Ecosystem and Climate Change (Shanghai Jiao Tong University), Ministry of Education, Shanghai, China

    Yingxu Wu

  4. Frontier Science Center for Deep Ocean Multispheres and Earth System, Physical Oceanography Laboratory, and Academician Workstation of Coastal Mass Transport and Integrated Environmental Management, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China

    Xianyao Chen & Wenli Zhong

  5. Key Laboratory for Polar Science of the Ministry of Natural Resources, Polar Research Institute of China, Shanghai, China

    Ruibo Lei

  6. Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xichen Li

  7. School of Marine Science and Policy, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

    Wei-Jun Cai

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  1. Yingxu Wu
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Contributions

Y.W. and D.Q. designed the program. Y.W., C.L., H.L. and D.Q. collected and synthesized the multisource data. Y.W., Z.Z., X.Y., Wanqin Zhong, C.L., H.L., D.Q. and W.-J.C. quality controlled, analysed, and interpreted the data, as well as prepared the paper. All authors contributed to the development of ideas, analysis, writing, revision and refinement of the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Wei-Jun Cai or Di Qi.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Climate Change thanks Jannes Koelling and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Compiled dataset in the Arctic Ocean.

(a) Data distribution across the whole Arctic Ocean colored by sampling year, with patches outlined by black lines representing the sub-regions. NS-Nordic Seas, FS-Fram Strait, BSO-Barents Sea Opening, NB-Nansen Basin, AB-Amundsen Basin, CB-Canada Basin. (b) Data distribution in the western Arctic Ocean. CS-Chukchi Shelf, CB-Canada Basin, IC-Ice-covered regions. The triangles refer to data collected by the Chinese National Arctic Research Expeditions (CHINARE) and pentagrams refer to data collected by the Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project. (c-k) Oxygen profile data coverage in the Arctic Ocean since 1980 over 5-year intervals.

Extended Data Fig. 2 The spatiotemporal distribution of oxygen in the western Arctic Ocean from 1994 to 2021.

(a) sampling stations. Triangles represent the CHINARE 2008-2018 cruises, and pentagrams represent the Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project cruises. The grey bars indicate the 170°W and 150°W sections, respectively. (b-c) profiles of oxygen along the 150°W section during 2000s and 2010s. (d-f) profiles of oxygen along the 170°W section during 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. In the 1990s, low-oxygen zones were confined to depths of 50–150 m along the Chukchi slope, but by the 2000s, these regions deepened and extended northward to approximately 84°N, forming a more continuous low-oxygen tongue between 100 and 300 m. By the 2010s, these low-oxygen regions became widespread and homogeneous, particularly along the Pacific inflow pathway and extended up to 86°N.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Decadal change in vertical oxygen concentration in the Canada Basin.

Left y-axis represents the corresponding potential density anomaly at each depth interval. The mean rate of oxygen change (ΔO2) is calculated for each depth interval (see Methods) and is represented by circles, which are connected by a black solid line. The grey shaded area indications the error band of the mean rates, calculated as the standard deviation. Note that for the upper 125 m, ΔO2 is calculated based on the density interval to distinguish Pacific Summer Water (potential density anomaly range of 23.2-25.2 kg m−3) from other surface waters. Black solid circles denote depth intervals with significant oxygen trend (also indicated by asterisk marker on the left), hollow circles denote depth intervals with insignificant oxygen trend. The blue line indicates biological-driven component (ΔO2,Bio) inferred from dissolved inorganic nitrogen change, and the red line indicates physical-driven component (ΔO2,Phy) including contributions from mixing and ventilation, as well as oxygen depletion from upstream (that is, AW in the eastern Arctic Ocean) changes in gas exchange. The calculation of these components is described in Methods.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 4 Vertical profile of water age based on CFC-11 along a trans-Arctic section from the Nordic Seas to the Canada Basin.

The dataset is built upon the GLODAPv2 and can be assessed from “Water mass ages based on GLODAPv2 data product” (NCEI Accession 0226793 at National Centers for Environmental Information). This figure is created by Ocean Data View at https://odv.awi.de/.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Global distribution of water age based on CFC-11 across the 300 m, 500 m, and 800 m depths.

(a) sampling stations. (b-d) water age based on CFC-11 at 300 m, 500 m, and 800 m, respectively. The dataset is built upon the GLODAPv2 and can be assessed from “Water mass ages based on GLODAPv2 data product” (NCEI Accession 0226793 at National Centers for Environmental Information). Note that the water ages are estimated using tracer CFC-11, which assumes no mixing and is simply derived by matching the observed tracer concentration to the atmospheric history. The colorbar scale is limited to 60 years, so it may restrict the display of some water ages exceeding 60 years. This figure is created by Ocean Data View at https://odv.awi.de/.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Decadal trends in oxygen concentration across different water masses in the eastern and western Arctic Ocean with different data processing schemes.

The figure is similar to Fig. 2 but (a, b) with different gridding resolution of 0.5° latitude by 1° longitude or (c, d) without seasonal adjustment. In (a-d), oxygen trends are presented as mean rates ± uncertainty, with uncertainties estimated using Monte-Carlo simulation (see “Uncertainty of long-term trend in oxygen and sensitivity test” in Methods). Color shadings indicate the 95% confidence bounds for the linear fits.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 7 The sensitivity test of data amounts for the decadal trends of oxygen in each sub-region of the Arctic Ocean.

(a-e) eastern Arctic Ocean. (f-i) western Arctic Ocean. In all panels, oxygen trends were evaluated by randomly removing 15% of data points and then re-tested by 1000 times. Numbers show the mean value of 1000-time trend and its standard deviation (mean ± std).

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 8 The sensitivity test of sampling pattern for the decadal trends of oxygen in each sub-region of the Arctic Ocean.

(a-e) eastern Arctic Ocean. (f-i) western Arctic Ocean. In all panels, oxygen trends were evaluated by randomly removing 15% of cruises and then re-tested by 1000 times. Numbers show the mean value of 1000-time trend and its standard deviation (mean ± std).

Source data

Extended Data Table 1 Global ocean volume, oxygen content and long-term change rate
Full size table
Extended Data Table 2 A summary of the oxygen measurements in the Canada Basin of western Arctic Ocean during 1994-2021
Full size table

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–14 and Table 1.

Supplementary Data 1

Statistical source data of Supplementary Figs. 4–6, 8 and 12–14.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Statistical source data.

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Wu, Y., Zheng, Z., Chen, X. et al. Amplified warming accelerates deoxygenation in the Arctic Ocean. Nat. Clim. Chang. 15, 859–865 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02376-0

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