Energy exchanges at the airsea interface together with the ocean advection govern the formation,maintenance and decay of sea surface temperature(SST) anomalies.Several aspects of the surface heat flux(SHF) feedback and the relation between SST and heat flux／transport variability are reviewed in this paper,based primarily on some of our recent studies.The heat flux anomaly is approximated as a forcing term plus a feedback term which is linear in SST.The SHF feedback parameter is determined from the lagged crosscovariances between SST and the SHF together with the autocovariance of SST.Feedback represented in this way is generally negative and acts to damp SST anomalies.It is dominated by the surface turbulent component.The strongest feedback is found at midlatitudes in both hemispheres,with the largest values occurring in the western and central portions of the oceans with extensions to higher latitudes.SHF feedback strengthens in northern winter and fall and weakens in spring and summer.These feedback features are reasonably well simulated in the CMIP3 coupled climate models.Nevertheless,the strength of the feedback in most of the models is somewhat weaker than reanalysisbased estimates.The“mean model”feedback parameter has better pattern correlations and smaller mean square differences than individual models when compared to reanalysisbased values.Based on the surface energy budget,SST variance may be expressed as the product of three factors:the sum of the variances of surface radiative and turbulent fluxes and the ocean heat transport,a transfer factor G measuring the persistence of SST,and an efficiency factor e reflecting the covariance structure among the heat fluxes and heat transport.The geographical distribution of the SST variance follows that of the sum of the variances of surface heat fluxes and the ocean heat transport,but modified by the factors of G and e.