The North Atlantic Ocean has been shown to be 1) potentially predictable up to a decade ahead, 2) important in the predictability of other regions/indices e.g. European temperatures, Atlantic hurricanes, Sahel rainfall, and, 3) crucial to the manifestation of longer term climate change involving the large-scale ocean (e.g. the AMO/AMV; Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation/Variability). Nonetheless, similarly to the widely considered “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (ECS; the long term temperature change in a climate model given a doubling of carbon dioxide levels), the spread in projections over the North Atlantic has remained large throughout IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) assessment reports. In this project, we will investigate the causes of the spread in climate projections of the North Atlantic across IPCC-CMIP6 to derive emergent constraints that will allow better projections of climate change in Europe: We will (1) investigate the specific mechanisms of North Atlantic change in these models and compare with historical observations. This will lead to (2) testing how these comparisons are sensitive to the model formulation (via targeted experiments in two comparable state-of-the-art CMIP6 models from European institutions that use the same underlying ocean model). Finally, this will allow us to (3) derive emergent constraints to narrow the spread in CMIP6 projections. This project will combine the statistical power of the CMIP6 archive with the detailed process understanding obtained from targeted sensitivity experiments conducted within a coordinated ocean framework. Our goal is twofold: To understand the mechanisms behind climate change projections in the North Atlantic/Europe and to use this knowledge to derive emergent constraints with which to narrow the uncertainties in these important projections. EPICE: Emergent Properties to Improve European Climate Estimates

Marine phytoplankton are a primary vector in the transport of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean interior via the biological carbon pump. The magnitude and efficiency of this flux hinges on phytoplankton community structure—the relative abundance of different phytoplankton groups present within a given water mass. Therefore, accurate estimates of phytoplankton community structure are crucial for understanding global carbon cycles and for anticipating the impact of global climate change. Phytoplankton distributions within the global ocean are typically inferred from bio-optical proxies reflecting phytoplankton physiology (e.g., chlorophyll fluorescence) or concentrations of particulate carbon (e.g., attenuation coefficients or optical backscatter coefficients). The deployment of biogeochemical Argo (BGC-Argo) autonomous profiling floats is transforming the global coverage of these measurements, providing new insight into connections between phytoplankton distributions and export processes. However, few studies have evaluated relationships between bio-optical proxies as measured by BGC-Argo floats and direct measurements of phytoplankton community structure, and none have performed an intercomparison of these relationships across different ocean basins. Therefore, I propose to 1) utilize a combination of novel and existing flow cytometry methods to estimate group-specific phytoplankton biomass across four disparate ocean provinces, 2) evaluate the bio-optical proxies that best predict group-specific phytoplankton biomass within each province, 3) leverage relationships identified in objective 2 to develop a novel transfer function for estimating phytoplankton biomass based on bio-optical proxies alone, and 4) apply this function to existing BGC-Argo data to quantify the importance of variability in phytoplankton community structure to carbon export to the mesopelagic zone, as compared to other mechanisms.

RESTORE deals with the need to restore Corallium rubrum, the Mediterranean red coral, a species of great ecological and commercial value that is of priority for conservation under European legislations because in sharp decline due to overharvesting and climate change effects. RESTORE will pave the path to innovative nature-based restoration approaches harnessing ecological processes thereby underpinning red coral recruitment success to foster its long-term and large-scale recovery and support its resilience to climate changes, overcoming the limitations of the existing restoration methods (e.g., coral transplantation). RESTORE will provide advanced knowledge on positive species interactions - i.e. between coral larvae, coralline algae and their associated microbiome, which are recognized as potential enable factors to enhance coral larvae recruitment. Biofilms of selected isolated bacteria strains will then be produced and tested to be used in coral restoration techniques in both control and natural conditions. The effects of global warming on these positive species interactions, and as a consequence on coral recruitment success, will be experimentally assessed to provide threshold values to be integrated in mathematical modelling approaches that will be applied to predict climate refugee areas for red coral recruits and to spatially guide future restoration projects in the view of diverse climate change scenarios. A marked multidisciplinarity, i.e. in-field and experimental ecology, DNA-based techniques and bioinformatics, mathematical modelling, will boost RESTORE effectiveness through the application of cutting-edge techniques. RESTORE will deliver relevant outcomes to support restoration actions under the EU Biodiversity Strategy and the Green Deal, and will provide an innovative approach potentially transferable and applicable to all Mediterranean corals, thus answering to the call for actions to support the urgent need of restoring the marine ecosystems.

Project OPEN (Opening sub-ice shelf cavities and exploring their impact on dense water Production and Export in NEMO global ocean models) will work to improve our understanding of the role that the under ice shelf seas play in influencing Antarctic water mass characteristics and circulation. Currently none of the climate models used to inform the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) simulate sub-ice shelf cavities, thereby excluding the role of ice-ocean interactions in their reports. An essential piece of the puzzle is thus missing from the Earth system projections that are used to inform climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. NEMO ocean model has recently developed the capacity to explicitly represent circulation under ice shelves, thereby enabling an investigation into the influence of introducing these key processes on global ocean circulation and hence climate. We hypothesise that the sub-ice shelf cavities have a major impact on dense water production and Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) characteristics. AABW is the densest and deepest global water mass and constitutes the lower limb of the overturning circulation, transporting heat, carbon, oxygen and nutrients around our planet’s oceans. Given the vital role that AABW plays in ocean and climate regulation, obtaining a better understanding of the dynamics at its source region, and improving model capacity to simulate these processes is a scientific top priority. The recently developed NEMO configurations including sub-ice shelf cavities are the ideal tools for this investigation and we propose to utilize these to explore dense water production and export. Project OPEN will place a postdoctoral fellow with extensive observational expertise in a group of modelling experts at Sorbonne Université, thereby facilitating a mutually beneficial exchange of skills between the fellow and the host and enabling the timely advancement of this new field of ocean science.

Applied electrochemistry plays a key role in many technologies, such as batteries, fuel cells, supercapacitors or solar cells. It is therefore at the core of many research programs all over the world. Yet, fundamental electrochemical investigations remain scarce. In particular, electrochemistry is among the fields for which the gap between theory and experiment is the largest. From the computational point of view, there is no molecular dynamics (MD) software devoted to the simulation of electrochemical systems while other fields such as biochemistry (GROMACS) or material science (LAMMPS) have dedicated tools. This is due to the difficulty of accounting for complex effects arising from (i) the degree of metallicity of the electrode (i.e. from semimetals to perfect conductors), (ii) the mutual polarization occurring at the electrode/electrolyte interface and (iii) the redox reactivity through explicit electron transfers. Current understanding therefore relies on standard theories that derive from an inaccurate molecular-scale picture. My objective is to fill this gap by introducing a whole set of new methods for simulating electrochemical systems. They will be provided to the computational electrochemistry community as a cutting-edge MD software adapted to supercomputers. First applications will aim at the discovery of new electrolytes for energy storage. Here I will focus on (1) ‘‘water-in-salts’’ to understand why these revolutionary liquids enable much higher voltage than conventional solutions (2) redox reactions inside a nanoporous electrode to support the development of future capacitive energy storage devices. These selected applications are timely and rely on collaborations with leading experimental partners. The results are expected to shed an unprecedented light on the importance of polarization effects on the structure and the reactivity of electrode/electrolyte interfaces, establishing MD as a prominent tool for solving complex electrochemistry problems.