The ocean provides a key component of the climate system, modulating the response to climate forcing on timescales of seasons to centuries. The global ocean affects the climate response in a variety of ways: sequestering excess heat and anthropogenic carbon from the atmosphere, redistributing heat and carbon within the ocean, and providing climate feedbacks to the atmosphere, cryosphere and biosphere. This climate response affects ocean extremes, such as marine heatwaves and ocean acidification extreme events.

This session invites contributions addressing the role of the ocean in a warming world, including submissions examining the underlying physical and biogeochemical mechanisms operating in the ocean and their effects on the climate response and marine extremes. Submissions may range widely from (i) applying theory including the use of climate metrics and climate feedbacks to understand the response to climate forcing; (ii) modelling applications extending from idealised ocean and climate models to fully complex Earth system models; and (ii) diagnostics of recent and historical ocean and climate data.

The session includes a solicited talk from Prof. Dr. Thomas Froelicher (Bern) on marine heat waves.