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POLARPROG-Polarforskningsprogram

Atmosphere-Ocean Interactions over Key Regions of the Arctic and Their Linkages to Midlatitudes

Alternative title: Interaksjoner mellom atmosfære og hav over nøkkelregioner i Arktis og deres koblinger til middels breddegrader

Awarded: NOK 10.0 mill.

Project Number:

328938

Project Period:

2022 - 2026

Funding received from:

Partner countries:

State-of-the-art weather and climate prediction models suffer from significant errors due to misrepresentations in both atmosphere-ocean interactions and atmospheric weather patterns. We aim to improve models by identifying processes and weather events leading to significant forecast errors. Our findings will guide model development in the polar regions with benefits for global weather and climate models. In particular, we will focus on atmosphere-ocean interactions during cold air outbreaks, which are large excursions of cold polar air masses over the relatively warmer ocean. These cold air outbreaks comprise the majority of the overall atmosphere-ocean heat exchange in the polar regions. Several recent and upcoming field campaigns provide valuable data to assess the fidelity of our models. As the aforementioned weather events are connected to the larger-scale setting of the atmospheric circulation, we will investigate coupling mechanisms between the polar and lower latitudes. Particular focus will be on incursions of heat and moisture into the Arctic. It has recently been argued that these incursions are becoming more frequent with climate change, though a thorough assessment of the representation of these events in our weather and climate models is still lacking. We will characterize these teleconnection events to identify and attribute model errors. Our results will explain errors in weather and climate models associated with atmosphere-ocean heat exchange and the representation of weather events. Given the importance of the atmosphere-ocean heat exchange in the subpolar regions, our findings will leave a profound impact on the weather and climate research community.

State-of-the-art weather and climate prediction models suffer from significant biases due to misrepresentation of local processes of atmosphere-ocean interactions as well large-scale biases in circulation patterns and variability of weather times-scales. We aim to improve prediction models by identifying pertinent processes leading to significant biases, attributable to both local as well as large-scale mechanisms. These findings will guide model development to improve predictive capabilities in the polar regions with ramifications for the global energy cycle. In particular, we will focus on the local atmosphere-ocean interactions during cold air outbreaks, which contribute to more than 70% of the overall heat exchange. Several recent and upcoming field campaigns address these processes providing valuable data for model inter comparison and process studies. We will assess model biases for heat and moisture exchange as well as deficiencies of models to represent these synoptic to mesoscale processes. As these weather events are in general connected to the larger-scale setting of the atmospheric circulation, we will investigate teleconnection and coupling mechanisms between polar regions and lower latitudes to assess the importance of external influences on Arctic climate and their representation in climate models. Particular focus will be on large-scale patterns associated with significant incursions of heat and moisture into the Arctic, with ramifications for the local development as well as the global energy exchange. It has recently been argued that these incursions are becoming more frequent with climate change, though a thorough assessment of the representation of the magnitude and variability of these events in climate models is still lacking. As this knowledge is needed to identify associated biases in energy transport, we will quantify and characterize these teleconnection events as well as attempt a bias attribution to their potential misrepresentation.

Publications from Cristin

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Funding scheme:

POLARPROG-Polarforskningsprogram