The Southern Ocean has been dutifully gobbling up a century's worth of carbon dioxide and heat released by human activities, but when we finally let go of our fossil fuel habit, it might come back to haunt us.

In a new paper, climate scientists from Germany predict that when we humans eventually stop releasing greenhouse gases into the air, and the world ultimately cools down, the Southern Ocean shall let out a tremendous and abrupt 'burp' of heat that will bring on global warming yet again, for at least a century.

Their prediction is based on a well-known climate framework , which combines models on atmospheric energy and moisture balance, ocean circulation and sea ice , land biosphere, and ocean biochemistry . This helped them simulate an idealized future climate change scenari

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