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Deep ocean control of global temperature after net-zero emissions

Nature Geoscience (2026)Cite this article

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Abstract

We analyse outputs from both climate mitigation scenarios and an energy balance model to investigate how deep ocean processes shape centennial-scale trajectories of global mean surface temperature after net-zero emissions are achieved. While surface temperature decreases as carbon dioxide concentration declines, this cooling trend could eventually reverse when vertical heat diffusion warms the deep ocean sufficiently to reduce the vertical temperature gradient, thereby weakening the deep ocean heat uptake.

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Fig. 1: Evolution of surface temperature anomaly and deep ocean temperature anomaly with two different pathways in low-emission scenarios in CMIP climate models.
Fig. 2: Evolution of surface temperature anomaly, deep ocean temperature anomaly, radiative forcing, net heat flux and heat diffusion in the energy balance model and CMIP climate models.

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Data availability

The data used in this study are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18203190 (ref. 36).

Code availability

All the figures were prepared in NCAR Command Language (NCL) version 6.4.0, which is publicly available at https://www.ncl.ucar.edu/. The code for the analysis is available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18203190 (ref. 36).

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Korea Environment Industry and Technology Institute (KEITI) through Climate Change R&D Project for New Climate Regime funded by Korea Ministry of Environment (MOE) (2022003560001).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marine Science and Convergent Technology, Hanyang University, Ansan, South Korea

    Yong-Han Lee

  2. Department of Climate and Energy Systems Engineering, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea

    Sang-Wook Yeh

  3. Frontier Science Center for Deep Ocean Multispheres and Earth System (FDOMES) and Physical Oceanography Laboratory, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China

    Guojian Wang

  4. Laoshan Laboratory, Qingdao, China

    Guojian Wang

  5. Institute of Marine Science and Technology, Shandong University, Qingdao, China

    Guojian Wang

  6. Earth Research Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Se-Yong Song

  7. Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

    Soon-Il An

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  1. Yong-Han Lee
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  2. Sang-Wook Yeh
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Contributions

S.-W.Y. and Y.-H.L. conceived of the study, and Y.-H.L conducted analysis and wrote the manuscript with comments and input from S.-W.Y., G.W., S.-Y.S. and S.-I.A. All authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript and the improvement of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Sang-Wook Yeh or Guojian Wang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Richard Williams and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available. Primary Handling Editor: Aliénor Lavergne, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 CO2 concentration in the low emission scenario of CMIP.

The timeseries of CO2 concentration in SSP1-2.6 scenario of CMIP6 (green solid line) and RCP2.6 scenario of CMIP5 (blue solid line).

Extended Data Fig. 2 Evolution of surface temperature anomaly and deep ocean temperature anomaly in the Energy Balance Model.

a, b Time series of surface temperature anomaly (red line), deep ocean temperature anomaly (blue line), and radiative forcing (gray line) under the enhanced γ (γ × 3) and the baseline γ experiments. Shaded regions represent the full range (minimum to maximum) of 41 simulations obtained by perturbing the exchange efficiency from −20% to +20% in 1% increments, and solid lines denote the ensemble means.

Extended Data Table 1 CMIP5 and CMIP6 models used in this study and the corresponding model centers. CMIP5 models are shown in bold and italics
Full size table

Supplementary information

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Lee, YH., Yeh, SW., Wang, G. et al. Deep ocean control of global temperature after net-zero emissions. Nat. Geosci. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-026-01934-1

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