Southern Ocean upwelling: Climatology and long-term trends

The Southern Ocean upwelling is the most globally significant upwelling branch, and it plays a crucial role in redistributing water, heat, salt, and carbon on a global scale. The aim of this study is to enhance the understanding of this upwelling system, focusing primarily on the climatology and long-term trends of the Southern Ocean upwelling, both historical and projected, using global climate models. The simulated large-scale upwelling in the Southern Ocean is ~0.5 m/day. Although the spatial distribution pattern of the simulated Southern Ocean upwelling appears similar across different models, the strength of the upwelling is highly sensitive to resolution, generally showing stronger upwelling in eddy-permitting and eddy-resolving models. The most intense upwelling is predominantly concentrated around five major topographic features; this finding is consistent with those of previous studies. Our analysis of an eddy-resolving climate model shows no discernible trend during a historical period (1850–2005) and under a business-as-usual emission scenario in the 21^st century (2006-2100). However, significant multidecadal variations are evident from this eddying model, which may be related to the low-frequency variations in the wind-stress curl and eddy kinetic energy. Notably, two lower-resolution climate models cannot very well simulate this multidecadal variations, and there is no consensus regarding its intensification or weakening. Our results suggest that wind stress is likely to increase under a scenario of comparatively high greenhouse gas emissions in the future; however, elevated vertical stratification of seawater may act as a barrier to the intensification of the upwelling.