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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.

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.

In a warming world, future rapid permafrost thawing can cause significant soil drying, surface warming, and atmospheric drying in the Arctic-Subarctic region, leading to an intensification of peat and forest fires in western Siberia and Canada.

Arctic amplification persists even in a year-round sea ice-free state due to greenhouse gas forcing, but weakens in a future year-round sea ice-free climate, implying Arctic sea ice’s importance, according to analysis of climate model simulations.

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.

Earth system models project that lake temperatures will warm beyond the range of natural variability to which aquatic ecosystems are adapted in the coming decades, with conditions exceeding natural analogues sooner at lower latitudes.

Despite hemispherically different responses, high-resolution model simulations used in this study show that moisture-related variables are the main regulators of tropical cyclone frequency under both orbital and greenhouse gas forcing.

Analyses of mitochondrial genomes from populations in southern Africa provide evidence of a southern African origin of anatomically modern humans and a sustained occupation of the homeland before the first migrations of people appear to be driven by regional climate shifts.

Many lakes on Earth are covered by seasonal ice, and as lake ice loss has been increasing, it is ever more important to quantify this. Here the authors present a fully coupled lake ice model projection as a part of the new CESM2 large ensemble modelling project and show that unprecedented lake ice loss is emerging globally as a result of anthropogenic-induced warming.

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.

The eastward propagation of the Madden-Julian Oscillation accelerated over the Indian Ocean and the Maritime Continent but decelerated over the western Pacific over 1979-2022 with recent warming of sea surface temperature and associated change in moisture gradients, according to an analysis of climate data.

Under sustained strong forcing, the tropical Pacific zonal sea surface temperature gradient is predicted to decrease, while paleoclimate proxy records show an increase over time with decreasing carbon dioxide concentrations, resembling warmer high carbon dioxide climates and colder periods with lower carbon dioxide, according to paleoclimate proxy records and climate model simulation results.

Atmospheric rivers are projected to become more frequent globally with rising atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, and are more likely to be associated with extreme precipitation events, according to ultra-high-resolution Earth System Model simulations and a novel detection algorithm.

Under scenarios of doubling or quadrupling of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, Antarctic Dense Shelf Water freshens significantly, which in turn inhibits the formation of abyssal water, according to simulations with a high-resolution ocean-ice-atmosphere model.