The ocean has stored vast amounts of carbon and heat due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions and climate change. We need to understand the processes driving this storage, that is uptake from the atmosphere, transfer to the ocean interior, redistribution within the ocean, and return to the ocean surface and the atmosphere. Also, ocean storage of carbon and heat are not independent: oceanic CO2 storage affects atmospheric CO2 levels, thereby atmospheric and oceanic warming. Ocean warming importantly, besides others changes ocean circulation and mixing which influences further uptake of both anthropogenic heat and carbon, and also perturbs the preindustrial ocean-atmosphere exchange of both, heat and carbon.

This session invites observational, numerical modeling and analytical studies that enhance the process understanding of ocean storage of carbon and/or heat under various climate scenarios: the contemporary situation of net-positive CO2 emissions and global warming, as well as future scenarios involving the gradual phasing out of CO2 emissions or a warming overshoot followed by net-negative emissions and global cooling. We also seek studies that explore the similarities and differences between ocean storage of carbon and heat, and how ocean uptake —and potential future release— affect climate.