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How mesoscale horizontal stirring changes with warming is not well understood. Here the authors present high-resolution simulations that show that mesoscale horizontal stirring increases in the Arctic Ocean and around Antarctica, mainly due to sea ice reduction.

Strong negative climatological air-sea interactions effectively damp warming over the eastern Indian Ocean, resulting in weakening of the winds therein. This, in turn, changes the strength of ocean currents, which is considered as the primary mechanism responsible for modulating warming patterns.

The authors of this study perform simulations with a high-resolution climate model and show that global warming may trigger an abrupt shift in the tropical climate system towards stronger and more predictable ENSO cycles, intensifying climate impacts across the globe.

Extreme La Niña events occur when cold sea surface temperatures across the central Pacific Ocean create a strong temperature gradient to the Maritime continent in the west. This work projects an increase in frequency of La Niña events due to faster land warming relative to the ocean, and a greater chance of them occurring following extreme El Niño events.

The slowdown in global average surface warming has recently been linked to sea surface cooling in the eastern Pacific Ocean. This work shows that strengthening trade winds caused a reduction in the 2012 global average surface air temperature of 0.1–0.2 °C. This may account for much of the warming hiatus and is a result of increased subsurface ocean heat uptake.

This Review looks at the state of knowledge on the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a natural climate phenomenon. It discusses recent advances and insights into how climate change will affect this natural climate varibility cycle.

High-resolution climate models exhibit reduced tropical Pacific mean-state biases due to better representation of ocean mesoscale processes, like tropical instability waves. With climate warming, these improved dynamics project weaker El Niño/Southern Oscillation sea surface temperature variability.

Satellite observations show slight increases in Antarctic sea-ice extent, yet climate models predict declines. Here sea-ice expansion is shown to occur when the Southern Ocean surface cools from natural climate variability, primarily linked via teleconnections with the tropical Pacific Ocean.

Low-frequency internal atmospheric variability accounts for about one quarter of observed Arctic Ocean warming over the past four decades and 60% of the accelerated warming from 2000 to 2018.

The last glacial period was characterized by a series of abrupt climate changes. An analysis of bottom water chemistry in the South Atlantic suggests that the southern extent of North Atlantic Deep Water was reduced during abrupt coolings.

HU is among the most conserved and abundant nucleoid-associated proteins in eubacteria. Here the authors investigate the role of histone-like proteins (HU) in the 3D organization of the bacteria DNA and show via soft X-ray tomography the process of nucleoid remodeling.

Our current understanding of the spatio-temporal complexity of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation phenomenon is reviewed and a unifying framework that identifies the key factors for this complexity is proposed.

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation is a naturally occurring fluctuation that originates in the tropical Pacific region and affects the lives of millions of people worldwide. An overview of relevant research suggests that progress in our understanding of the impact of climate change on many of the processes that contribute to El Niño variability is considerable, but projections for the phenomenon itself are not yet possible.

Seawater oxygen isotopes record the anthropogenic signal of ice-sheet meltwater discharge that appears earlier, and with a greater magnitude than the accompanying salinity signal, according to isotope-enabled Earth system modelling

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has global climatic implications, necessitating understanding of its observed and projected changes. This Review brings together knowledge of ENSO in a warming climate, revealing projected increases in ENSO magnitude, as well as ENSO-related rainfall and sea surface temperature variability.

Early summer sea ice volume in the Beaufort Sea over the past 2 years has been strongly influenced by the transport of old sea ice from adjacent seas, suggests a compilation of observational data and numerical modeling.

Following the latest Permian extinction, nutrient availability from enhanced continental weathering enabled biological recovery in the ocean, according to K-Ar dating of clay minerals and nitrogen isotope analyses from high northern latitudes.

A consensus is emerging regarding the influence of aerosols on global precipitation patterns, although smaller-scale effects remain uncertain, according to a synthesis of recent work.