Three time-slice simulations of the Eemian (eem), the mid-Holocene (hol), and a pre-industrial (pri) control run with the coupled atmosphere-ocean-model ECHAM5/MPI-OM

Orbital forcing does not only exert direct insolation effects, but also alters climate indirectly through feedback mechanisms that modify atmosphere and ocean dynamics and meridional heat and moisture transfers. We investigate the regional effects of these changes by detailed analysis of atmosphere and ocean circulation and heat transports in a coupled atmosphere-ocean-sea ice-biosphere general circulation model (ECHAM5/JSBACH/MPI-OM). We perform long term quasi equilibrium simulations under pre-industrial, mid-Holocene (6000 years before present - yBP), and Eemian (125 000 yBP) orbital boundary conditions. Compared to pre-industrial climate, Eemian and Holocene temperatures show generally warmer conditions at higher and cooler conditions at lower latitudes. Changes in sea-ice cover, ocean heat transports, and atmospheric circulation patterns lead to pronounced regional heterogeneity. Over Europe, the warming is most pronounced over the north-eastern part in accordance with recent reconstructions for the Holocene. We attribute this warming to enhanced ocean circulation in the Nordic Seas and enhanced ocean-atmosphere heat flux over the Barents Shelf in conduction with retreat of sea ice and intensified winter storm tracks over northern Europe.

Results of a Finite-Element Sea-Ice Ocean Model (FESOM) set-up to study the interannual to decadal variability in the deep-water formation rates

The characteristics of a global set-up of the Finite-Element Sea-Ice Ocean Model under forcing of the period 1958-2004 are presented. The model set-up is designed to study the variability in the deep-water mass formation areas and was therefore regionally better resolved in the deep-water formation areas in the Labrador Sea, Greenland Sea, Weddell Sea and Ross Sea. The sea-ice model reproduces realistic sea-ice distributions and variabilities in the sea-ice extent of both hemispheres as well as sea-ice transport that compares well with observational data. Based on a comparison between model and ocean weather ship data in the North Atlantic, we observe that the vertical structure is well captured in areas with a high resolution. In our model set-up, we are able to simulate decadal ocean variability including several salinity anomaly events and corresponding fingerprint in the vertical hydrography. The ocean state of the model set-up features pronounced variability in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation as well as the associated mixed layer depth pattern in the North Atlantic deep-water formation areas.

On the effects of circulation, sediment resuspension and biological incorporation by diatoms in an ocean model of aluminium, link to model data

The distribution of dissolved aluminium in the West Atlantic Ocean shows a mirror image with that of dissolved silicic acid, hinting at intricate interactions between the ocean cycling of Al and Si. The marine biogeochemistry of Al is of interest because of its potential impact on diatom opal remineralisation, hence Si availability. Furthermore, the dissolved Al concentration at the surface ocean has been used as a tracer for dust input, dust being the most important source of the bio-essential trace element iron to the ocean. Previously, the dissolved concentration of Al was simulated reasonably well with only a dust source, and scavenging by adsorption on settling biogenic debris as the only removal process. Here we explore the impacts of (i) a sediment source of Al in the Northern Hemisphere (especially north of ~ 40° N), (ii) the imposed velocity field, and (iii) biological incorporation of Al on the modelled Al distribution in the ocean. The sediment source clearly improves the model results, and using a different velocity field shows the importance of advection on the simulated Al distribution. Biological incorporation appears to be a potentially important removal process. However, conclusive independent data to constrain the Al / Si incorporation ratio by growing diatoms are missing. Therefore, this study does not provide a definitive answer to the question of the relative importance of Al removal by incorporation compared to removal by adsorptive scavenging.

Regional ocean model for the Mediterranean, links to model files

A regional ocean general circulation model of the Mediterranean is used to study the climate of the Last Glacial Maximum. The atmospheric forcing for these simulations has been derived from simulations with an atmospheric general circulation model, which in turn was forced with surface conditions from a coarse resolution earth system model. The model is successful in reproducing the general patterns of reconstructed sea surface temperature anomalies with the strongest cooling in summer in the northwestern Mediterranean and weak cooling in the Levantine, although the model underestimates the extent of the summer cooling in the western Mediterranean. However, there is a strong vertical gradient associated with this pattern of summer cooling, which makes the comparison with reconstructions complicated. The exchange with the Atlantic is decreased to roughly one half of its present value, which can be explained by the shallower Strait of Gibraltar as a consequence of lower global sea level. This reduced exchange causes a strong increase of salinity in the Mediterranean in spite of reduced net evaporation.

Efficient parallelization of a regional ocean model for the western Mediterranean Sea

This paper focuses on the parallelization of an ocean model applying current multicore processor-based cluster architectures to an irregular computational mesh. The aim is to maximize the efficiency of the computational resources used. To make the best use of the resources offered by these architectures, this parallelization has been addressed at all the hardware levels of modern supercomputers: firstly, exploiting the internal parallelism of the CPU through vectorization; secondly, taking advantage of the multiple cores of each node using OpenMP; and finally, using the cluster nodes to distribute the computational mesh, using MPI for communication within the nodes. The speedup obtained with each parallelization technique as well as the combined overall speedup have been measured for the western Mediterranean Sea for different cluster configurations, achieving a speedup factor of 73.3 using 256 processors. The results also show the efficiency achieved in the different cluster nodes and the advantages obtained by combining OpenMP and MPI versus using only OpenMP or MPI. Finally, the scalability of the model has been analysed by examining computation and communication times as well as the communication and synchronization overhead due to parallelization.

Holocene experiment with coupled atmosphere-ocean-model ECHAM5/MPI-OM

Changes in the Earth's orbit lead to changes in the seasonal and meridional distribution of insolation. We quantify the influence of orbitally induced changes on the seasonal temperature cycle in a transient simulation of the last 6000 years - from the mid-Holocene to today - using a coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model (ECHAM5/MPI-OM) including a land surface model (JSBACH). The seasonal temperature cycle responds directly to the insolation changes almost everywhere. In the Northern Hemisphere, its amplitude decreases according to an increase in winter insolation and a decrease in summer insolation. In the Southern Hemisphere, the opposite is true. Over the Arctic Ocean, decreasing summer insolation leads to an increase in sea-ice cover. The insulating effect of sea ice between the ocean and the atmosphere leads to decreasing heat flux and favors more "continental" conditions over the Arctic Ocean in winter, resulting in strongly decreasing temperatures. Consequently, there are two competing effects: the direct response to insolation changes and a sea-ice insulation effect. The sea-ice insulation effect is stronger, and thus an increase in the amplitude of the seasonal temperature cycle over the Arctic Ocean occurs. This increase is strongest over the Barents Shelf and influences the temperature response over northern Europe. We compare our modeled seasonal temperatures over Europe to paleo reconstructions. We find better agreements in winter temperatures than in summer temperatures and better agreements in northern Europe than in southern Europe, since the model does not reproduce the southern European Holocene summer cooling inferred from the paleo reconstructions. The temperature reconstructions for northern Europe support the notion of the influence of the sea-ice insulation effect on the evolution of the seasonal temperature cycle.

Experimental and diagnostic protocol for the physical component of the CMIP6 Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (OMIP)

The Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (OMIP) aims to provide a framework for evaluating, understanding, and improving the ocean and sea-ice components of global climate and earth system models contributing to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). OMIP addresses these aims in two complementary manners: (A) by providing an experimental protocol for global ocean/sea-ice models run with a prescribed atmospheric forcing, (B) by providing a protocol for ocean diagnostics to be saved as part of CMIP6. We focus here on the physical component of OMIP, with a companion paper (Orr et al., 2016) offering details for the inert chemistry and interactive biogeochemistry. The physical portion of the OMIP experimental protocol follows that of the interannual Coordinated Ocean-ice Reference Experiments (CORE-II). Since 2009, CORE-I (Normal Year Forcing) and CORE-II have become the standard method to evaluate global ocean/sea-ice simulations and to examine mechanisms for forced ocean climate variability. The OMIP diagnostic protocol is relevant for any ocean model component of CMIP6, including the DECK (Diagnostic, Evaluation and Characterization of Klima experiments), historical simulations, FAFMIP (Flux Anomaly Forced MIP), C4MIP (Coupled Carbon Cycle Climate MIP), DAMIP (Detection and Attribution MIP), DCPP (Decadal Climate Prediction Project), ScenarioMIP (Scenario MIP), as well as the ocean-sea ice OMIP simulations. The bulk of this paper offers scientific rationale for saving these diagnostics.

OMIP contribution to CMIP6: experimental and diagnostic protocol for the physical component of the Ocean Model Intercomparison Project

The Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (OMIP) is an endorsed project in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). OMIP addresses CMIP6 science questions, investigating the origins and consequences of systematic model biases. It does so by providing a framework for evaluating (including assessment of systematic biases), understanding, and improving ocean, sea-ice, tracer, and biogeochemical components of climate and earth system models contributing to CMIP6. Among the WCRP Grand Challenges in climate science (GCs), OMIP primarily contributes to the regional sea level change and near-term (climate/decadal) prediction GCs. OMIP provides (a) an experimental protocol for global ocean/sea-ice models run with a prescribed atmospheric forcing; and (b) a protocol for ocean diagnostics to be saved as part of CMIP6. We focus here on the physical component of OMIP, with a companion paper (Orr et al., 2016) detailing methods for the inert chemistry and interactive biogeochemistry. The physical portion of the OMIP experimental protocol follows the interannual Coordinated Ocean-ice Reference Experiments (CORE-II). Since 2009, CORE-I (Normal Year Forcing) and CORE-II (Interannual Forcing) have become the standard methods to evaluate global ocean/sea-ice simulations and to examine mechanisms for forced ocean climate variability. The OMIP diagnostic protocol is relevant for any ocean model component of CMIP6, including the DECK (Diagnostic, Evaluation and Characterization of Klima experiments), historical simulations, FAFMIP (Flux Anomaly Forced MIP), C4MIP (Coupled Carbon Cycle Climate MIP), DAMIP (Detection and Attribution MIP), DCPP (Decadal Climate Prediction Project), ScenarioMIP, HighResMIP (High Resolution MIP), as well as the ocean/sea-ice OMIP simulations.

The importance of wind and buoyancy forcing for the boundary density variations and the geostrophic component of the AMOC at 26°N

It is widely thought that changes in both the surface buoyancy fluxes and wind stress drive variability in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), but that they drive variability on different time scales. For example, wind forcing dominates short-term variability through its effects on Ekman currents and coastal upwelling, whereas buoyancy forcing is important for longer time scales (multiannual and decadal). However, the role of the wind forcing on multiannual to decadal time scales is less clear. Here the authors present an analysis of simulations with the Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO) ocean model with the aim of explaining the important drivers of the zonal density gradient at 26°N, which is directly related to the AMOC. In the experiments, only one of either the wind stress or the buoyancy forcing is allowed to vary in time, whereas the other remains at its seasonally varying climatology. On subannual time scales, variations in the density gradient, and in the AMOC minus Ekman, are driven largely by local wind-forced coastal upwelling at both the western and eastern boundaries. On decadal time scales, buoyancy forcing related to the North Atlantic Oscillation dominates variability in the AMOC. Interestingly, however, it is found that wind forcing also plays a role at longer time scales, primarily impacting the interannual variability through the excitation of Rossby waves in the central Atlantic, which propagate westward to interact with the western boundary, but also by modulating the decadal time-scale response to buoyancy forcing.

Ontogeny of long distance migration

The movements of some long-distance migrants are driven by innate compass headings that they follow on their first migrations (e.g., some birds and insects), while the movements of other first-time migrants are learned by following more experienced conspecifics (e.g., baleen whales). However, the overall roles of innate, learned, and social behaviors in driving migration goals in many taxa are poorly understood. To look for evidence of whether migration routes are innate or learned for sea turtles, here for 42 sites around the world we compare the migration routes of >400 satellite-tracked adults of multiple species of sea turtle with ∼45 000 Lagrangian hatchling turtle drift scenarios. In so doing, we show that the migration routes of adult turtles are strongly related to hatchling drift patterns, implying that adult migration goals are learned through their past experiences dispersing with ocean currents. The diverse migration destinations of adults consistently reflected the diversity in sites they would have encountered as drifting hatchlings. Our findings reveal how a simple mechanism, juvenile passive drift, can explain the ontogeny of some of the longest migrations in the animal kingdom and ensure that adults find suitable foraging sites.

Prediction of the Indian summer monsoon rainfall using a state-of-the-art coupled ocean-atmosphere model

A state-of-the-art model of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system, the climate forecast system (CFS), from the National Centres for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), USA, has been ported onto the PARAM Padma parallel computing system at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Bangalore and retrospective predictions for the summer monsoon (June-September) season of 2009 have been generated, using five initial conditions for the atmosphere and one initial condition for the ocean for May 2009. Whereas a large deficit in the Indian summer monsoon rainfall (ISMR; June-September) was experienced over the Indian region (with the all-India rainfall deficit by 22% of the average), the ensemble average prediction was for above-average rainfall during the summer monsoon. The retrospective predictions of ISMR with CFS from NCEP for 1981-2008 have been analysed. The retrospective predictions from NCEP for the summer monsoon of 1994 and that from CDAC for 2009 have been compared with the simulations for each of the seasons with the stand-alone atmospheric component of the model, the global forecast system (GFS), and observations. It has been shown that the simulation with GFS for 2009 showed deficit rainfall as observed. The large error in the prediction for the monsoon of 2009 can be attributed to a positive Indian Ocean Dipole event seen in the prediction from July onwards, which was not present in the observations. This suggests that the error could be reduced with improvement of the ocean model over the equatorial Indian Ocean.