Ocean Regulation of Climate by Heat and Carbon Sequestration and Transports (ORCHESTRA)

2019-2023 So-Chic

Southern Ocean Carbon and Heat Impact on Climate is a Horizon 2020 project aiming to quantify and understand fluxes at the air-sea-ice interface, through the ocean mixed layer and into the dense bottom waters formed in the Southern Ocean.

2018-2021 RoSES

The Role of the Southern Ocean in the Earth System programme builds on ORCHESTRA to study the biological and physical contributors to the carbon cycle in the Southern Ocean and its impact on ocean carbon uptake and sequestration.

2013–2021 UKESM

This is a JWCRP NERC/Met Office collaboration that pools both expertise and resources around the development, exploitation and evaluation of future UK Earth System modelling tools. UKESM1 will be the main UK contribution to the WCRP 6th Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), which will provide underpinning science knowledge for the next IPCC Assessment Report (AR6). UKESM has two overriding objectives:

• To develop, apply and evaluate a world-leading Earth System Model
• To grow and support a community of UK ESM scientists

NERC input is provided through a cross-centre NC programme (UKESM-LTSM) and by a number of centre-specific component model development efforts. ORCHESTRA scientists will collaborate in assessing marine carbon cycle processes in the UKESM simulations, including future projections, and in addition model improvements developed within ORCHESTRA will provide input to future UKESM model development. See https://www.jwcrp.org.uk/research-activity/ukesm.asp

2017–2021 COMICS

Controls over Ocean Mesopelagic Interior Carbon Storage, COMICS is a four year collaborative research project that aims to quantify the flow of carbon in the ocean’s ‘twilight’ zone in order to more accurately model global climate change. See https://www.comics.ac.uk

2015– ongoing SOCCOM

The Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modelling project (SOCCOM) is an NSF-sponsored program which will deploy up to 200 biogeochemical Argo floats to measure carbon, nutrients, and oxygen in the Southern Ocean. Numerical modelling will reduce the uncertainty in our climate model projections of future climate associated with poor simulation of the Southern Ocean. See https://soccom.princeton.edu

2010– ongoing

ESA CCI for SST The project funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) as part the Agency’s Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Programme. The project focuses on the following issues relating to Sea Surface Temperature (SST):

• Analysis of scientific requirements relating to climate;
• Development of improved scientific algorithms;
• Inter-comparison and selection of algorithms;
• System prototyping and production of SST datasets;
• Product validation and end-user assessment.

See https://esa-sst-cci.org

2015–2020 AtlantOS

AltantOS aims to improve and innovate Atlantic observing by using the Framework of Ocean Observing to obtain an international, more sustainable, more efficient, more integrated, and fit-for-purpose system contributing to the Trans-Atlantic Research Alliance, the GEO (Group on Earth Observations) global initiative Blue Planet, and GOOS (Global Ocean Observing Systems). Hence, the AtlantOS initiative will have a long-lasting and sustainable contribution to the societal, economic and scientific benefit arising from this integrated approach. This EU Horizon 2020 project has 62 partners in 18 countries. See https://www.atlantos-h2020.eu

2000– ongoing ARGO

Global array of over 3700 autonomous profiling floats. See https://www.argo.ucsd.edu/About_Argo.html and https://www.euro-argo.eu for Euro-ARGO

2014–2018 SMURPHS

Securing Multidisciplinary UndeRstanding and Prediction of Hiatus and Surge events. The central aim of the research is to better understand the causes of periods where the rate of global-mean surface temperature is increased or decreased at decadal time-scales compared with long term (multi-decadal) trends. The multi-disciplinary research team are seeking to understand both the slowdown in the rate of warming since the late 1990s and also earlier hiatus and surge events. See https://www.smurphs.leeds.ac.uk

2013–2017 DEEP-C

The Diagnosing Earth’s Energy Pathways in the Climate system consortium is a 4-year project that is tackling the questions:

1. What mechanisms explain the reduced global surface warming rate since around 2000?
2. Where is the excess energy due to rising greenhouse gas concentrations currently accumulating in the climate system?

See https://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~sgs02rpa/research/DEEP-C.html

1992–2015 SRb1 Drake Passage

Transects are performed annually whenever possible. See https://projects.noc.ac.uk/drake-passage

2010–2013 WAGES

A 3-year deployment of the autonomous air-sea flux system AutoFlux on the RRS James Clark Ross, making covariance measurements of the air-sea transfer of momentum, sensible heat and latent heat, including 3 full seasons (October to May) in the Southern Ocean. See https://projects.noc.ac.uk/wages

2009–2015 DIMES

Diapycnal and Isopycnal Mixing Experiment in the Southern Ocean. See https://dimes.ucsd.edu/en

2008–2011 ANDREX

Antarctic Deep Water Rates of Export. See https://noc.ac.uk/projects/andrex