OCEAN CLIMATE MODELING
The ocean climate modeling working group aims
to understand how ocean biology and physics
responds to a climate
perturbation and, importantly, the extent to
which this response is fed back to the climate
system. The overall
goal of this work is to understand the extent
to which the ocean serves as a heat and carbon
reservoir for the global
climate system.
The group is composed of physical
oceanographers (Susan Lozier, of Duke University,
and Yi Chao,
of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory), a biological
oceanographer (Richard Barber, Duke University),
a statistical climatologist
(Gabi Hegerl, Duke University), and a computational
scientist (Mark Reed, of the NC Supercomputing
Center).
Ocean scientists have an enormous role
to play in deciphering our evolving climate because
of the ocean's importance
in establishing that climate. The ocean contains
more than fifty times the amount of CO2 than
the atmosphere, the
heat capacity of the ocean is more than a thousand
times greater that that of the atmosphere,
and the ocean takes
up, by gas exchange with the atmosphere, about
40% of the CO2 emitted to the atmosphere each
year.
Despite the importance
of the ocean to our global climate, we still
have quite a limited understanding of the
complex oceanic lag times
and linkages between radiative input and climate
response. The overall aim of the group’s
work is to understand
how ocean biology and physics respond to both
natural and human-induced climate perturbation
and, importantly, the
extent to which this response is fed back to
the climate system. The goal is to considerably
improve our ability
to reconstruct past climates with dynamical consistency,
and to develop projections of future climate.
The
investigation of the biological and physical
coupling in response to climate change will use
an eddy-resolving
coupled physical-biological model. In the course
of this initiative, the group will make the first
attempt to run
an eddy-resolving, basin-scale Ocean General
Circulation Model (OCGM), coupling physics/dynamics
with biogeochemistry.
During the Spring 2003 term,
the group is offering a course to graduate
students on ocean climate
modeling and analysis. For more information,
please click here.
