LEGACY: Labrador Current Governs North Atlantic Climate System?

Understanding how the North Atlantic Climate System will change in the next few decades, and how this will impact the UK, is a key environmental challenge facing society. We need to be able to better predict how our climate and weather extremes will change on timescales which our Government can plan for, and this means developing a better understanding of the mechanisms causing changes in our climate system on decadal timescales. We must then also ensure that the climate models which we use for our predictions are able to properly represent these processes. Our vision is to uncover a new mechanism for decadal variability in the North Atlantic climate system which involves changes in the Labrador Current. This is a southward flow of cold, fresh water off the Labrador coast, and which can cause large-scale changes in the North Atlantic Ocean. We will examine how such changes might affect decadal-timescale changes in our climate system, by using one of our latest, state-of-the-art climate models, backed up with available observations. The project is therefore expected to lead to new and innovative insights into the climate system.