The ocean/sea ice system
Exponential growth in the power of computers and richness of observational coverage is revealing how the
ocean and sea ice systems exchange heat, mass, and momentum with the atmosphere to produce weather
and climate. These same tools are just beginning to explore how ocean circulation and the biological processes that carry
out half of the planet's photosynthesis are able to sequester 20-30% of the excess carbon dioxide that humans
release into the atmosphere each year. The ocean's growing contributions to the global economy; including fisheries, recreation,
and waste disposal; are adding to the stresses on these systems with unanticipated consequences. The
ocean climate lab exploits the power of these new computational and observational tools to explore the science of ocean/sea ice variability,
interactions with atmosphere and land, and how human activities are changing the ocean/sea ice systems.
Research themes:
- • Exploring historical ocean/sea ice climate
- — Simple Ocean Data Assimilation (SODA3/4)
- — Regional Arctic REanalysis (RARE)
- — Observation-based sea surface temperature (OISSTvX)
- — Observation-based surface currents (BOSC)
- — Observation-based mixed layer properties
- • Satellite observations
- — Sea surface temperature
- — Sea surface height
- — Sea surface salinity
- • Climate studies
- — Tropical climate
- — Arctic climate
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Credit: Molly Carton 10/11/2020 |
