Southern Ocean warming due to human influence

I show that the latest series of climate models reproduce the observed mid‐depth Southern Ocean warming since the 1950s if they include time‐varying changes in anthropogenic greenhouse gases, sulphate aerosols and volcanic aerosols in the Earth's atmosphere. The remarkable agreement between observations and state‐of‐the art climate models suggests significant human influence on Southern Ocean temperatures. I also show that climate models that do not include volcanic aerosols produce mid‐depth Southern Ocean warming that is nearly double that produced by climate models that do include volcanic aerosols. This implies that the full effect of human‐induced warming of the Southern Ocean may yet to be realized.