2020 SNAP-DRAGON Funded: Enhanced Monitoring of North Atlantic
SNAP-DRAGON Funded: 2020 Update on Monitoring North Atlantic Circulation
The news comes from the UK National Oceanography Centre article SNAP-DRAGON project funded to study the changing subpolar North Atlantic Ocean. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Funding has been announced for a major project aimed at improving understanding of an ocean region important for climate predictability.
The SNAP-DRAGON project will see NOC scientists work alongside colleagues from Oxford, Southampton, Reading, Liverpool, Oban, and the US, to study the subpolar North Atlantic Ocean, which stretches between the UK, Greenland and Canada. The project is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and National Science Foundation (NSF).
Heat released from the subpolar North Atlantic influences the storm track that determines weather in Europe. Furthermore, the sinking of ocean water in this region carries heat and carbon down into the ocean interior, away from the atmosphere.
The SNAP-DRAGON project will provide new knowledge of the subpolar North Atlantic, which will help to improve predictions of ocean and climate variability.
SNAP-DRAGON will build on the results of the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Programme (OSNAP), which has recently made the first ever sustained observations of the large-scale subpolar North Atlantic circulation. SNAP-DRAGON scientists will use these observations, together with numerical models of the ocean, to understand what causes the large variability observed in the circulation of this region. The researchers will also establish what the variations in temperature and circulation tell us about future ocean and climate conditions. By figuring out how the subpolar North Atlantic circulation works and which physical processes are important, SNAP-DRAGON scientists will be able to assess the performance of climate models and suggest improvements.
Associate Professor Helen Johnson from Oxford Earth Sciences, who is leading the project, said “This is a really exciting project which should help us to properly get to grips with how the circulation in the subpolar North Atlantic works, and the role it plays in the climate system.”
Scientists at the NOC will lead the analysis of the OSNAP and other observations. A team at Oxford University will take the lead on using state-of-the art numerical models to probe the ocean physics responsible for variability and change. The SNAP-DRAGON team includes scientists at several US institutions and partners from a range of European institutions. It will bring observations and models together in a range of innovative ways to produce a step change in our understanding of the causes of subpolar ocean variability, their implications for ocean and climate predictability in this region, and the degree to which we can trust their representation in climate models.
[Note: While this announcement recognizes the unsettled science, it concerns me to hear about innovative use of models applied to observations. In the past, that has meant twisting the data to fit the modelers’ presuppositions in service of alarmism. Let’s trust these scientists, but verify they really want the truth and not just pushing an agenda. I am somewhat reassured that Gerald McCarthy, (head of the RAPID project referenced later on) spoke truth to the climatists in the past, though they protested against him for his honesty.]
Background from Previous Post Feb.1, 2019 New Publication from M.S. Lozier et al.
A Feb.1, 2019 publication from M.S. Lozier et al. is A sea change in our view of overturning in the subpolar North Atlantic which is reporting on the first 21 months of observations from the newly installed OSNAP array described in a previous post from a year ago (reprinted below). The article is paywalled, but the main findings are provided at a Science Daily article European waters drive ocean overturning, key for regulating climate. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Summary:
An international study reveals the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, which helps regulate Earth’s climate, is highly variable and primarily driven by the conversion of warm, salty, shallow waters into colder, fresher, deep waters moving south through the Irminger and Iceland basins. This upends prevailing ideas and may help scientists better predict Arctic ice melt and future changes in the ocean’s ability to mitigate climate change by storing excess atmospheric carbon.
Credit: Carolina Nobre, WHOI Media
In a departure from the prevailing scientific view, the study shows that most of the overturning and variability is occurring not in the Labrador Sea off Canada, as past modeling studies have suggested, but in regions between Greenland and Scotland. There, warm, salty, shallow waters carried northward from the tropics by currents and wind, sink and convert into colder, fresher, deep waters moving southward through the Irminger and Iceland basins.
Overturning variability in this eastern section of the ocean was seven times greater than in the Labrador Sea, and it accounted for 88 percent of the total variance documented across the entire North Atlantic over the 21-month study period.
“Overturning carries vast amounts of anthropogenic carbon deep into the ocean, helping to slow global warming,” said co-author Penny Holliday of the National Oceanography Center in Southampton, U.K. “The largest reservoir of this anthropogenic carbon is in the North Atlantic.”
“Overturning also transports tropical heat northward,” Holliday said, “meaning any changes to it could have an impact on glaciers and Arctic sea ice. Understanding what is happening, and what may happen in the years to come, is vital.”
MIT’s Carl Wunsch and other outside experts said the study was helpful, but pointed out that 21 months of study is not enough to know if this different location is temporary or permanent.
[Note: The comment about oceans taking up CO2 could be misleading. The ocean contains dissolved CO2 amounting to 50 times atmospheric CO2. Each year about 20% of all CO2 in the air goes into the ocean, replaced by outgassing CO2. The tiny fraction of atmospheric CO2 from humans is exchanged proportionately. Henry’s law applies to the water/air interface, so that a warmer ocean absorbs slightly less, and a colder ocean absorbs slightly more CO2. The exchange equilibrium is hardly disturbed by the little bit of human produced CO2. Thus the ocean serves as a massive buffer against human emissions.]
Previous Post: AMOC 2018: Not Showing Climate Threat
The AMOC is back in the news following a recent Ocean Sciences meeting. This update adds to the theme Oceans Make Climate. Background links are at the end, including one where chief alarmist M. Mann claims fossil fuel use will stop the ocean conveyor belt and bring a new ice age. Actual scientists are working away methodically on this part of the climate system, and are more level-headed. H/T GWPF for noticing the recent article in Science Ocean array alters view of Atlantic ‘conveyor belt’ By Katherine Kornei Feb. 17, 2018 . Excerpts with my bolds.
The powerful currents in the Atlantic, formally known as the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), are a major engine in Earth’s climate. The AMOC’s shallower limbs—which include the Gulf Stream—transport warm water from the tropics northward, warming Western Europe. In the north, the waters cool and sink, forming deeper limbs that transport the cold water back south—and sequester anthropogenic carbon in the process. This overturning is why the AMOC is sometimes called the Atlantic conveyor belt.
Last week, at the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU’s) Ocean Sciences meeting here, scientists presented the first data from an array of instruments moored in the subpolar North Atlantic. The observations reveal unexpected eddies and strong variability in the AMOC currents. They also show that the currents east of Greenland contribute the most to the total AMOC flow. Climate models, on the other hand, have emphasized the currents west of Greenland in the Labrador Sea. “We’re showing the shortcomings of climate models,” says Susan Lozier, a physical oceanographer at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who leads the $35-million, seven-nation project known as the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program (OSNAP).
The research and analysis is presented by Dr. Lozier et al. in this publication Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program: A New International Ocean Observing System Images above and text excerpted below with my bolds.
For decades oceanographers have assumed the AMOC to be highly susceptible to changes in the production of deep waters at high latitudes in the North Atlantic. A new ocean observing system is now in place that will test that assumption. Early results from the OSNAP observational program reveal the complexity of the velocity field across the section and the dramatic increase in convective activity during the 2014/15 winter. Early results from the gliders that survey the eastern portion of the OSNAP line have illustrated the importance of these measurements for estimating meridional heat fluxes and for studying the evolution of Subpolar Mode Waters. Finally, numerical modeling data have been used to demonstrate the efficacy of a proxy AMOC measure based on a broader set of observational data, and an adjoint modeling approach has shown that measurements in the OSNAP region will aid our mechanistic understanding of the low-frequency variability of the AMOC in the subtropical North Atlantic.
Finally, we note that while a primary motivation for studying AMOC variability comes from its potential impact on the climate system, as mentioned above, additional motivation for the measure of the heat, mass, and freshwater fluxes in the subpolar North Atlantic arises from their potential impact on marine biogeochemistry and the cryosphere. Thus, we hope that this observing system can serve the interests of the broader climate community.
In summary, while modeling studies have suggested a linkage between deep-water mass formation and AMOC variability, observations to date have been spatially or temporally compromised and therefore insufficient either to support or to rule out this connection.
Current observational efforts to assess AMOC variability in the North Atlantic.
The U.K.–U.S. Rapid Climate Change–Meridional Overturning Circulation and Heatflux Array (RAPID–MOCHA) program at 26°N successfully measures the AMOC in the subtropical North Atlantic via a transbasin observing system (Cunningham et al. 2007; Kanzow et al. 2007; McCarthy et al. 2015). While this array has fundamentally altered the community’s view of the AMOC, modeling studies over the past few years have suggested that AMOC fluctuations on interannual time scales are coherent only over limited meridional distances. In particular, a break point in coherence may occur at the subpolar–subtropical gyre boundary in the North Atlantic (Bingham et al. 2007; Baehr et al. 2009). Furthermore, a recent modeling study has suggested that the low-frequency variability of the RAPID–MOCHA appears to be an integrated response to buoyancy forcing over the subpolar gyre (Pillar et al. 2016). Thus, a measure of the overturning in the subpolar basin contemporaneous with a measure of the buoyancy forcing in that basin likely offers the best possibility of understanding the mechanisms that underpin AMOC variability. Finally, though it might be expected that the plethora of measurements from the North Atlantic would be sufficient to constrain a measure of the AMOC within the context of an ocean general circulation model, recent studies (Cunningham and Marsh 2010; Karspeck et al. 2015) reveal that there is currently no consensus on the strength or variability of the AMOC in assimilation/reanalysis products.
In addition we have a recent report from the United Kingdom Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) lead author G.D. McCarthy Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) 2017.
Figure 1: Ten-day (colours) and three month (black) low-pass filtered timeseries of Florida Straits transport (blue), Ekman transport (green), upper mid-ocean transport (magenta), and overturning transport (red) for the period 2nd April 2004 to end- February 2017. Florida Straits transport is based on electromagnetic cable measurements; Ekman transport is based on ERA winds. The upper mid-ocean transport, based on the RAPID mooring data, is the vertical integral of the transport per unit depth down to the deepest northward velocity (~1100 m) on each day. Overturning transport is then the sum of the Florida Straits, Ekman, and upper mid-ocean transports and represents the maximum northward transport of upper-layer waters on each day. Positive transports correspond to northward flow.
The RAPID/MOCHA/WBTS array (hereinafter referred to as the RAPID array) has revolutionized basin scale oceanography by supplying continuous estimates of the meridional overturning transport (McCarthy et al., 2015), and the associated basin-wide transports of heat (Johns et al., 2011) and freshwater (McDonagh et al., 2015) at 10-day temporal resolution. These estimates have been used in a wide variety of studies characterizing temporal variability of the North Atlantic Ocean, for instance establishing a decline in the AMOC between 2004 and 2013.
Summary from RAPID data analysis
MCCIP reported in 2006 that:
- a 30% decline in the AMOC has been observed since the early 1990s based on a limited number of observations. There is a lack of certainty and consensus concerning the trend;
- most climate models anticipate some reduction in strength of the AMOC over the 21st century due to increased freshwater influence in high latitudes. The IPCC project a slowdown in the overturning circulation rather than a dramatic collapse.
- And in 2017 that:
- a substantial increase in the observations available to estimate the strength of the AMOC indicate, with greater certainty, a decline since the mid 2000s;
- the AMOC is still expected to decline throughout the 21st century in response to a changing climate. If and when a collapse in the AMOC is possible is still open to debate, but it is not thought likely to happen this century.
And also that:
- a high level of variability in the AMOC strength has been observed, and short term fluctuations have had unexpected impacts, including severe winters and abrupt sea-level rise;
- recent changes in the AMOC may be driving the cooling of Atlantic ocean surface waters which could lead to drier summers in the UK.
Conclusions
- The AMOC is key to maintaining the mild climate of the UK and Europe.
- The AMOC is predicted to decline in the 21st century in response to a changing climate.
- Past abrupt changes in the AMOC have had dramatic climate consequences.
- There is growing evidence that the AMOC has been declining for at least a decade, pushing the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability into a cool phase.
- Short term fluctuations in the AMOC have proved to have unexpected impacts, including being linked
with severe winters and abrupt sea-level rise.
Background:
Evidence is Mounting: Oceans Make Climate
via Science Matters
July 13, 2020 at 08:16AM
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