Journal article : Review
Controls of the global overturning circulation of the ocean
- Abstract:
- The global overturning circulation (GOC) is the largest scale component of the ocean circulation, associated with a global redistribution of key tracers such as heat and carbon. The GOC generates decadal to millennial climate variability, and will determine much of the long-term response to anthropogenic climate perturbations. This review aims at providing an overview of the main controls of the GOC. By controls, we mean processes affecting the overturning structure and variability. We distinguish three main controls: mechanical mixing, convection, and wind pumping. Geography provides an additional control on geological timescales. An important emphasis of this review is to present how the different controls interact with each other to produce an overturning flow, making this review relevant to the study of past, present and future climates as well as to exoplanets’ oceans.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 3.5MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41612-025-01185-8
Authors
+ Natural Environment Research Council
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/02b5d8509
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- npj Climate and Atmospheric Science More from this journal
- Volume:
- 8
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 304
- Publication date:
- 2025-08-15
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-07-28
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
2397-3722
- Language:
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English
- Subtype:
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Review
- Pubs id:
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2282342
- Local pid:
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pubs:2282342
- Deposit date:
-
2025-08-21
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Roquet et al
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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