Shift in how heat moves around globe: study

The way heat moves from one part of the world to another, is changing in the face of climate change. PHOTO| FOTOSEARCH

The earth's atmosphere and oceans play important roles in moving heat from one part of the world to another, and new research is illuminating how those patterns are changing in the face of climate change.

"The greenhouse effect and carbon dioxide aren't the only issues to consider as the planet grows warmer – they are just one part of the equation.

The way the atmosphere and oceans move heat around is changing, too, and this could have significant effects on temperatures around the world," said Zhengyu Liu, co-lead author of the study and professor of climate dynamics in the Department of Geography at The Ohio State University.

Scientists analysed model simulations to illustrate how heat is expected to be transferred by the oceans and atmosphere in the near future.

They compared the models with historical data from oceans to paint a clearer picture of how climate change is shifting and will continue to shift these patterns in this century. Warming temperatures are driving increased heat transfer in the atmosphere, which is compensated by reduced heat transfer in the ocean. The excess heat is trapped in the Southern Ocean around the Antarctic.

HEAT TRANSFER

Without heat transfer, the world's hottest spots would be sizzling and the coolest spots would be even colder. Conditions in both hot and cold climates are affected by the movement of heat from the equator toward the poles, said Chengfei He, a graduate student of atmospheric science, who was involved in the study.

As scientists look for a better understanding of all the factors contributing to climate change – and for ways to ameliorate the problem – these heat-transfer patterns are important to watch, said He.

"The ocean stores a lot of heat and in the last 50 years, it has increased. We can correlate that directly with increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide caused by human activity," said Liu.

"Most studies like this have looked at future changes, hundreds of years from now. We examined the near-term differences of a warming climate. For now, that heat is not re-entering the atmosphere, but at some point it may. If that were to happen, changes in heat transfer could contribute to significant shifts in normal temperatures worldwide,” he said, adding that it is important to predict how the heat transfer will change in future.

The findings were published in Nature Climate Change.