Transient warming events provide important opportunities to examine how the ocean–climate system responds to carbon-cycle perturbations. The dynamical mechanisms linking carbon forcing, ice-sheet feedbacks, and spatially heterogeneous temperature change remain incompletely understood.

We explore the active role of ice-sheets in shaping surface albedo, topographic forcing, atmospheric circulation, and ocean heat redistribution. By integrating numerical experiments with emerging geological constraints, this study highlight the importance of ice-sheet feedbacks in deep-time ocean–climate dynamics and offer a mechanistic context for interpreting proxy evidence of deep-time environmental change, while also emphasizing the need for further evaluating the ECS/ESS divergence in future warming scenerios.