The North Atlantic Climate System Integrated Study (ACSIS) - 1 year extension
Lead Research Organisation:
National Oceanography Centre
Department Name: Science and Technology
Abstract
Major changes are occurring across the North Atlantic climate system: in oceanic and atmospheric temperatures and circulation, in sea ice thickness and extent, and in key atmospheric constituents such as ozone, methane and particles known as aerosols. Many observed changes are unprecedented in instrumental records. Changes in the North Atlantic directly affect the UK's climate, weather and air quality, with major economic impacts on agriculture, fisheries, water, energy, transport and health. The North Atlantic also has global importance, since changes here drive changes in climate, hazardous weather and air quality further afield, such as in North America, Africa, and Asia.
The ACSIS extension is a 1 year continuation of an ongoing 5-year strategic research programme called ACSIS: the North Atlantic Climate System Integrated Study.
ACSIS brings together and exploits a wide range of capabilities and expertise in the UK environmental science community. Its goal is to enhance the UK's capability to detect, attribute (i.e. explain the causes of) and predict changes in the North Atlantic Climate System. ACSIS is delivering new understanding of the North Atlantic climate system by integrating new and old observations of atmospheric physics and chemistry, of the ocean state and of Arctic ice, complemented by detailed data analysis and state-of-the-art computer simulations. Observations are obtained from diverse sources including NERC's observational sites in the North Atlantic, satellite remote sensing and the NCAS FAAM aeroplane. The computer modelling component is providing simulations of the atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice with unprecedented spatial detail.
The ACSIS extension will exploit advances made during the past 5 years to address specific new research questions which have arisen recently. It will investigate exciting evidence that changes in the climate of the North Atlantic/European region are much more predictable than was previously thought and will start to assess the impact of North Atlantic changes on the UK environment.
The ACSIS extension is a 1 year continuation of an ongoing 5-year strategic research programme called ACSIS: the North Atlantic Climate System Integrated Study.
ACSIS brings together and exploits a wide range of capabilities and expertise in the UK environmental science community. Its goal is to enhance the UK's capability to detect, attribute (i.e. explain the causes of) and predict changes in the North Atlantic Climate System. ACSIS is delivering new understanding of the North Atlantic climate system by integrating new and old observations of atmospheric physics and chemistry, of the ocean state and of Arctic ice, complemented by detailed data analysis and state-of-the-art computer simulations. Observations are obtained from diverse sources including NERC's observational sites in the North Atlantic, satellite remote sensing and the NCAS FAAM aeroplane. The computer modelling component is providing simulations of the atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice with unprecedented spatial detail.
The ACSIS extension will exploit advances made during the past 5 years to address specific new research questions which have arisen recently. It will investigate exciting evidence that changes in the climate of the North Atlantic/European region are much more predictable than was previously thought and will start to assess the impact of North Atlantic changes on the UK environment.
Publications
Andersson T
(2022)
Seasonal Arctic sea ice forecasting with probabilistic deep learning
Grist J
(2021)
Future Evolution of an Eddy Rich Ocean Associated with Enhanced East Atlantic Storminess in a Coupled Model Projection
in Geophysical Research Letters
Landy J
(2021)
Improved Arctic Sea Ice Freeboard Retrieval From Satellite Altimetry Using Optimized Sea Surface Decorrelation Scales
in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
Li F
(2021)
Observation-based estimates of heat and freshwater exchanges from the subtropical North Atlantic to the Arctic
in Progress in Oceanography
Megann A
(2021)
Mechanisms for Late 20th and Early 21st Century Decadal AMOC Variability
in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
New A
(2021)
Labrador Slope Water connects the subarctic with the Gulf Stream
in Environmental Research Letters
Ortega P
(2021)
Labrador Sea subsurface density as a precursor of multidecadal variability in the North Atlantic: a multi-model study
in Earth System Dynamics
Rabe B
(2022)
Overview of the MOSAiC expedition: Physical oceanography
in Elem Sci Anth
Skliris N
(2021)
Assessing Extreme Environmental Loads on Offshore Structures in the North Sea from High-Resolution Ocean Currents, Waves and Wind Forecasting
in Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
Solomon A
(2021)
Freshwater in the Arctic Ocean 2010-2019
in Ocean Science
| Description | As a result of the work funded through ACSIS there have been significant steps forward in our understanding of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a major Atlantic Ocean circulation phenomenon which brings heat and salt from the subtropics to the Northern North Atlantic, helping to maintain a relatively mild north western European climate relative to regions at the same latitude elsewhere on the globe. We have learned from model simulations that changes to surface cooling in the Irminger Sea between Greenland and Iceland were responsible for the downturn in the AMOC that occurred between the 1980s and the 2000s. Previously the focus was on deep convection in the Labrador Sea. Our work has helped to shift the paradigm away from deep ocean convection and towards gradual transformation of watermasses as they circulate around and are exported southwards from the Subpolar North Atlantic (which spans the ocean region from about 45N to about 65N). We have also documented the subsequent very gradual increase of the AMOC from 2010 onwards and are investigating how the changing AMOC impacts the surface temperatures in the subpolar North Atlantic. Finally we have found from climate model projections that sea level around the UK is likely to increase by a few 10s of cm over and above the latest IPCC projections due to changes in ocean circulation caused by global warming. We have also made a significant step forward in understanding observed multidecadal changes in North Atlantic heat content. Using a combination of in situ ocean observations, atmospheric reanalyses and a state-of-the-art ocean model, we have provided evidence that the periodic reversals in the anomalous heat content are related to propagation of large scale slowly moving oceanic waves. Understanding this mechanism will improve future predictions of ocean heat content. The multidecadal changes on ocean heat content have been shown to influence weather and climate of the land areas surrounding the North Atlantic Ocean. |
| Exploitation Route | The outcomes will inform the next round of NERC LTS-M national capability programmes such as CANARI. However they will also be highly influential in the international development of Atlantic climate science in the next 5-10 years (via our legacy scientific papers and datasets and especially a substantial number of synthesis papers). Beyond the research community our results are likely to have an impact on adaptation and mitigation policy via our work on climate storylines which paint plausible future scenarios based on solid scientific foundations. Our sea level work and work on heat content variability in particular are likely to have impact in this way. |
| Sectors | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Energy,Environment,Financial Services, and Management Consultancy,Healthcare,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Transport |
| Title | Intermediate resolution climate model FORTE2 |
| Description | This is a significantly updated version of a fast, inexpensive and low resolution coupled climate model developed previously at the National Oceanography Centre and used for idealised climate experiments.The updated version now runs on parallel processors using MPI software, has a more advanced atmospheric component including a resolved stratosphere and can simulate 300+ model years in 1 day of real time. This opens up the possibility of investigating paleaoclimate with a full primitive equation model, as well as studying contemporary climate and performing climate projections at a fraction of the cost of standard CMIP-style climate models. In particular the model is readily configurable, allowing control over land geometry and orography, ocean topography, and geophysical parameters such as rotation rate, solar input, orbital parameters etc. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | As it has just been released, impact is restricted to the publication which documents the model performance |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/4108373#.YijBQb3P3rI |
| Title | 1/4 degree historical forced ocean simulation |
| Description | Output from ocean model simulation forced by CORE2 estimates of surface atmospheric conditions. Fields stored are monthly temperature, salinity, ocean currents and other fields for 1958-2007. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Understanding of the proximate cause of the observed variability (increase up to the mid 1990s, and then an ongoing decrease) of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. This has been written up as a journal article: Megann, Alex ; Blaker, Adam ; Josey, Simon ; New, Adrian ; Sinha, Bablu. 2021 Mechanisms for late 20th and early 21st century decadal AMOC variability. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 126 (12). https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JC017865 |
| URL | https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/119a5d4795c94d2e94f610647640edc0 |
| Title | Monthly ocean and sea-ice output from 1/4° NEMO GO6 integration forced by CORE2 data |
| Description | Monthly output from an integration of the GO6 configuration of the NEMO (Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean) ocean and sea-ice model, forced by the CORE2 (Coordinated Ocean-ice Reference Experiments version 2.0) corrected inter-annual forcing (CIAF) surface field dataset. UK Global Ocean GO6 consists of version 3.6 of NEMO and version 5.2.1 of the CICE (Community Ice CodE) sea-ice model, and the present simulation is on the global eORCA025 1/4° grid. The ocean is initialised from a climatology based on the EN3 monthly objective analysis (Ingleby and Huddleston, 2007) averaged over years 2004-2008, and is integrated from 1958 to 2007. The model was run on the Archer supercomputing platform through the Rose/Cylc interface on Puma, and the run ID on the Puma system is u-ap795. The integrations were funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under the Atlantic Climate System Integrated Study (ACSIS) project (NE/N018044/1). |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The data were used to write a paper on AMOC variability 1948-2020: 10.5285/119a5d4795c94d2e94f610647640edc0 |
| URL | https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/119a5d4795c94d2e94f610647640edc0 |
| Title | Monthly ocean and sea-ice output from 1/4° NEMO GO6 integration forced by DFS5.2 data |
| Description | Monthly output from an integration of the UK Global Ocean, GO6, configuration of the NEMO (Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean) ocean and sea-ice model, forced by the DFS5.2 (Drakkar Forcing Set: Dussin et al, 2016) surface field dataset. GO6 consists of version 3.6 of NEMO and version 5.2.1 of the CICE (Community Ice CodE) sea-ice model, and the present simulation is on the global eORCA025 1/4° grid. The ocean is initialised from a climatology based on the EN3 monthly objective analysis (Ingleby and Huddleston, 2007) averaged over years 2004-2008, and is integrated from 1958 to 2015. The sea-ice fields are only available for the period 1958 to 2008. The model was run on the Archer supercomputing platform through the Rose/Cylc interface on Puma, and the run ID on the Puma system is u-ao882. The integrations were funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under the Atlantic Climate System Integrated Study (ACSIS) project (NE/N018044/1). |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The data has been used to write a paper on historical AMOC variability 1948-2020: Megann, Alex ; Blaker, Adam ; Josey, Simon ; New, Adrian ; Sinha, Bablu. 2021 Mechanisms for late 20th and early 21st century decadal AMOC variability. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 126 (12). https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JC017865 |
| URL | https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/a0708d25b4fc44c5ab1b06e12fef2f2e |
| Title | Monthly ocean and sea-ice output from 1/4° NEMO GO6 integration forced by JRA55 data |
| Description | Monthly output from an integration of the UK Global Ocean, GO6, configuration of the NEMO (Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean) ocean and sea-ice model, forced by the JRA-55 (Japanese 55-year atmospheric reanalysis: Tsujino, 2018) surface field dataset. GO6 consists of version 3.6 of NEMO and version 5.2.1 of the CICE (Community Ice CodE) sea-ice model, and the present simulation is on the global eORCA025 1/4° grid. The ocean is initialised from a climatology based on the EN3 monthly objective analysis (Ingleby and Huddleston, 2007) averaged over years 2004-2008, and is integrated from 1958 to 2020. The sea-ice fields are only available for the period 1989 to 2001. The model was run on the Archer supercomputing platform through the Rose/Cylc interface on Puma, and the run ID on the Puma system is u-ba494. The integrations were funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under the Atlantic Climate System Integrated Study (ACSIS) project (NE/N018044/1). |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The data has been used to write a paper on AMOC variability 1948-2020: Megann, Alex ; Blaker, Adam ; Josey, Simon ; New, Adrian ; Sinha, Bablu. 2021 Mechanisms for late 20th and early 21st century decadal AMOC variability. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 126 (12). https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JC017865 |
| URL | https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/4c545155dfd145a1b02a5d0e577ae37d |
| Title | Subpolar North Atlantic ocean heat content (surface to 1000m) using objectively mapped Argo profiling float data. |
| Description | Monthly ocean heat content (surface to 1000m) in the North Atlantic Subpolar region calculated using objectively mapped Argo profiling float data. This calculation of ocean heat content used potential enthalpy (from TEOS10) instead of potential temperature, which removes the need for a fixed specific heat capacity. Density was from in situ density rather than a fixed value. This was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under the Atlantic Climate System Integrated Study (ACSIS) project (NE/N018044/1). |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | used as an Atlantic Climate Indicator by the NERC ACSIS Programme |
| URL | https://www.bodc.ac.uk/data/published_data_library/catalogue/10.5285/d23c26bc-6e6c-5bbf-e053-6c86abc... |
| Title | Subpolar North Atlantic ocean heat content (surface to 1000m) using the EN4.2.2 temperature data set. |
| Description | Monthly ocean heat content (surface to 1000m) in the North Atlantic Subpolar region, from 1950 to 2020, calculated using the EN4.2.2 temperature data set. This calculation of ocean heat content used potential enthalpy (from TEOS10) instead of potential temperature, which removes the need for a fixed specific heat capacity. Density was from insitu density rather than a fixed value. This was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under the Atlantic Climate System Integrated Study (ACSIS) project (NE/N018044/1). |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | used as an Atlantic Climate Indicator by the ACSIS programme |
| URL | https://www.bodc.ac.uk/data/published_data_library/catalogue/10.5285/d09552c1-5e31-55e1-e053-6c86abc... |
| Description | GreenBlock |
| Organisation | University of Lincoln |
| Department | School of Geography |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | providing high resolution coupled model output and advice on how to use it |
| Collaborator Contribution | expertise in atmospheric processes related to Greenland Blocking and implications for regional weather and climate |
| Impact | The collaboration has only just started so output and outcomes will occur int he next 2-3 years. The collaboration involves two disciplines: oceanography and meteorology |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Title | Fast, Parallel intermediate complexity climate model (FORTE 2.0) |
| Description | This is a climate model with relatively low resolution (2.8 degrees in the atmosphere and 2 degrees in the ocean), but optimised for MP and open MP parallel processing so that it is fast enough to multicentennial and millennial climate simulations. It is easily configurable so that different continental and orographic/ocean bathymetry configurations can be explored. The model can be run with our without a stratosphere. There are basic thermodynamic sea ice and land soi/vegetation models |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | As this has only just been released, we are expecting impacts to build up over time. A paper has been published describing the model: FORTE 2.0: a fast, parallel and flexible coupled climate model. Blaker, A., Joshi, M., Sinha, B., Stevens, D., Smith, R. & Hirschi, J., 19 Jan 2021, In : Geoscientific Model Development. 14, 1, p. 275-293 19 p. |
| URL | http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3632569 |