Abstract
Ocean surface wind changes regulate air–sea exchanges of momentum, buoyancy, and gases, with far‑reaching implications for the climate system. Although human influences on Southern Hemisphere winds are established from models, their detection and attribution in observations remain uncertain. Here, by applying a fingerprint‑based detection method to satellite observations and single‑forcing climate simulations, we show that an anthropogenic signal in Southern Hemisphere annual-mean surface wind speed (SWS) has emerged in the observational record. This signal is primarily associated with a poleward shift of the midlatitude SWS pattern, which is detectable since around 2016 across five observational datasets, rather than with an intensification of tropical winds. By 2016, single-forcing simulations attribute 80% of the simulated poleward shift to greenhouse gas forcing. This anthropogenic shift in SWS explains 31% of the observed increase in mechanical energy input to the Southern Ocean by wind work. Our findings demonstrate that human‑caused changes in Southern Ocean surface winds are already altering oceanic energy transfer, with further impacts anticipated as greenhouse gas emissions contiguously increase.
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Data availability
CMIP6 outputs are available from the Earth System Grid Federation portals (https://metagrid.esgf-west.org/search/cmip6/). Observations of surface wind speed are available from Copernicus Marine Service (https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00183), Cross-Calibrated Multi-Platform V3.1 (https://www.remss.com/measurements/ccmp/), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (https://coastwatch.noaa.gov/cwn/products/noaa-ncei-blended-seawinds-nbs-v2.html), NSF NCAR Research Data Archive (https://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/d260001/#) and Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (https://www.j-ofuro.com/en/). ERA5 reanalysis is available at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/#!/home. JRA-55 reanalysis is available at https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/jra-55. Wind stress is derived from Copernicus Marine Service (https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00183), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (https://coastwatch.noaa.gov/cwn/products/noaa-ncei-blended-seawinds-nbs-v2.html) and Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (https://www.j-ofuro.com/en/). Ocean current velocity is obtained from the Multi Observation Global Ocean ARMOR3D L4 analysis product (https://data.marine.copernicus.eu/product/MULTIOBS_GLO_PHY_TSUV_3D_MYNRT_015_012/description).
Code availability
All plots and analyses are carried out using MATLAB version R2021b. To interpolate the model grid data, we use climate data operators (CDO) available at https://code.mpimet.mpg.de/projects/cdo/. All code files are available upon request.
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Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China project (42530604) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (202541004).
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B.G. conceived the study. Y.X. conducted the analysis under B.G.’s instruction. Y.X and B.G. contributed to the methodology. Y.X. wrote the original manuscript. B.G. and L.W. improved the clarity of the results and the manuscript.
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Xie, Y., Gan, B. & Wu, L. Emerging human-induced changes in the Southern Hemisphere ocean surface winds. npj Clim Atmos Sci (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-026-01395-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-026-01395-8
