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Momarsat 2022 cruise report: summary of dives and operations, and position of moorings and observation infrastructures and sampling locations

The Climate SPHINX (Stochastic Physics HIgh resolutioN eXperiments) project is a comprehensive set of ensemble simulations aimed at evaluating the sensitivity of present and future climate to model resolution and stochastic parameterisation. The EC-Earth Earth system model is used to explore the impact of stochastic physics in a large ensemble of 30-year climate integrations at five different atmospheric horizontal resolutions (from 125 up to 16 km). The project includes more than 120 simulations in both a historical scenario (1979–2008) and a climate change projection (2039–2068), together with coupled transient runs (1850–2100). A total of 20.4 million core hours have been used, made available from a single year grant from PRACE (the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and close to 1.5 PB of output data have been produced on SuperMUC IBM Petascale System at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Garching, Germany. About 140 TB of post-processed data are stored on the CINECA supercomputing centre archives and are freely accessible to the community thanks to an EUDAT data pilot project. This paper presents the technical and scientific set-up of the experiments, including the details on the forcing used for the simulations performed, defining the SPHINX v1.0 protocol. In addition, an overview of preliminary results is given. An improvement in the simulation of Euro-Atlantic atmospheric blocking following resolution increase is observed. It is also shown that including stochastic parameterisation in the low-resolution runs helps to improve some aspects of the tropical climate – specifically the Madden–Julian Oscillation and the tropical rainfall variability. These findings show the importance of representing the impact of small-scale processes on the large-scale climate variability either explicitly (with high-resolution simulations) or stochastically (in low-resolution simulations).

Leaflet on the climate service for winter tourism industry, co-designed by Blue-Action: Arctic Impact on Weather and Climate (EU Horizon 2020) WP5 CS1. English language version.

Objectives: to improve the understanding on the sphere of influence of hydrothermal vents on the distribution of deep-sea megafauna around vent sites and the exploration of Sarda seamount to improve our knowledge on the distribution and abundance of large VME indicator species and deep-sea commercial fishes in the large Azores region. Vessel: R/V Pelagia Chief scientist: Sabine Gollner (NIOZ) Scientific team: Carlos Dominguez-Carrió (IMAR), Sabine Gollner (NIOZ) Main achievements: Improvement of our understanding on the effects of hydrothermal vent plumes on the distribution of benthic megafauna Identification of new VME areas in Sarda seamount, including glass sponge aggregations and dense cold-water coral assemblages Cruise summary: The Rainbow 2019 cruise on board of R/V Pelagia allocated 2 days of work to explore 2 different deep-sea areas of the Azores region using the Hopper tow-cam system: the Rainbow hydrothermal vent site and Sarda seamount. Overall, 6 successful video transects were carried out, generating more than 18 hours of seafloor images. These dives provided information along 17.8 km of seabed, at depths that ranged between 430 and 2,500 meters. Two high-definition video transects of 1.5 km long were performed at the hydrothermal vent site, starting and ending at a distance larger than 500 m off the main active chimneys. Spatial changes in the structure of the benthic community will be visually evaluated to understand the potential effect of vent plumes on deep-sea megafauna. The total amount of bottom time recorded at Rainbow site was above 3 hours and 20 minutes, with all footage considered valid for annotation purposes. Another main objective of the Rainbow 2019 cruise was to explore Sarda seamount, located on the western side of the MAR. This geological structure stretches for more than 120 kilometres in length, and its summit can reach depths as shallow as 300 m. The 4 Hopper dives carried out at Sarda seamount aimed to obtain video footage from a wide bathymetric range, starting down to 1000 m depth all the way up to the summit. The 4 dives covered 14.8 km of seabed, generating over 15 hours of bottom time.

An interactive PowerPoint slideshow made for home school children in the UK. The presentation includes basic information about the Arctic, its environment, animals, and their importance. There is also a small section on climate change and its effects on the Arctic environment. Finally, it ends with a child-friendly quiz to test their knowledge.

This is the English version of the informed consent that has been used for staekholder interactions. Similar forms have been used for focus groups and workshops.

The European Research Infrastructure Consortium “Integrated Carbon Observation System” (ICOS) aims at delivering high quality greenhouse gas (GHG) observations and derived data products (e.g., regional GHG-flux maps) for constraining the GHG balance on a European level, on a sustained long-term basis. The marine domain (ICOS-Oceans) currently consists of 11 Ship of Opportunity lines (SOOP – Ship of Opportunity Program) and 10 Fixed Ocean Stations (FOSs) spread across European waters, including the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans and the Barents, North, Baltic, and Mediterranean Seas. The stations operate in a harmonized and standardized way based on community-proven protocols and methods for ocean GHG observations, improving operational conformity as well as quality control and assurance of the data. This enables the network to focus on long term research into the marine carbon cycle and the anthropogenic carbon sink, while preparing the network to include other GHG fluxes. ICOS data are processed on a near real-time basis and will be published on the ICOS Carbon Portal (CP), allowing monthly estimates of CO2 air-sea exchange to be quantified for European waters. ICOS establishes transparent operational data management routines following the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) guiding principles allowing amongst others reproducibility, interoperability, and traceability. The ICOS-Oceans network is actively integrating with the atmospheric (e.g., improved atmospheric measurements onboard SOOP lines) and ecosystem (e.g., oceanic direct gas flux measurements) domains of ICOS, and utilizes techniques developed by the ICOS Central Facilities and the CP. There is a strong interaction with the international ocean carbon cycle community to enhance interoperability and harmonize data flow. The future vision of ICOS-Oceans includes ship-based ocean survey sections to obtain a three-dimensional understanding of marine carbon cycle processes and optimize the existing network design.

This flyer is an introduction to the H2020 climate science project Blue-Action. It covers our aims, work packages and details of who to contact for further information.If you are interested in having a printed copy, please contact hannah.grist@srsl.com

A coordinated effort, based on observing system simulation experiments (OSSEs), has been carried out by four European ocean forecasting centers for the first time, in order to provide insights on the present and future design of the in situ Atlantic Ocean observing system from a monitoring and forecasting perspective. This multi-system approach is based on assimilating synthetic data sets, obtained by sub-sampling in space and time using an eddy-resolving unconstrained simulation, named the Nature Run. To assess the ability of a given Atlantic Ocean observing system to constrain the ocean model state, a set of assimilating experiments were performed using four global eddy-permitting systems. For each set of experiments, different designs of the in situ observing system were assimilated, such as implementing a global drifter array equipped with a thermistor chain down to 150 m depth or extending a part of the global Argo array in the deep ocean. While results from the four systems show similarities and differences, the comparison of the experiments with the Nature Run, generally demonstrates a positive impact of the different extra observation networks on the temperature and salinity fields. The spread of the multi-system simulations, combined with the sensitivity of each system to the evaluated observing networks, allowed us to discuss the robustness of the results and their dependence on the specific analysis system. By helping define and test future observing systems from an integrated observing system view, the present work is an initial step toward better-coordinated initiatives supporting the evolution of the ocean observing system and its integration within ocean monitoring and forecasting systems. Refereed 14.A Manual (incl. handbook, guide, cookbook etc) 2019-03-14