Annual Report 2011
The evaluation of Norwegian Earth Science commissioned by the Research Council gave high praise to the Bjerknes Centre, concluding that it is on a leading international level and a stronghold in Norwegian Earth Science. Also the groups participating in the centre received high marks. It is clear that our centre is scientifically vibrant and visible.
While we are harvesting from the collaborations and integration that the CoE funding has led to, we have initiated a process further integrating people, ideas and results. In order to ensure that major findings are properly integrated and that we can finish our 10-years within the CoE system, we will in the last two years of the CoE activities concentrate CoE resources on what we call syntheses. These will lead to scientific papers where key results are brought together and hopefully lead to lasting legacies from our CoE period.
The syntheses cover all the major science objectives; they encompass all research groups, often pulling together activities and people from different groups.
The activities in the syntheses comprise several topics we have been working extensively on in the Centre:
- The development and dynamics of the abrupt changes occurring during the last deglaciation.
- Multidecadal and longer term variations after the last ice age - i.e. how, how much and why did climate in our region change before human interventions.
- The role of the subpolar gyre in the North Atlantic in driving climate variability in high latitudes, synthesising both model data, instrumental data and unique, high-quality paleoclimatic proxy data.
- Dynamics and role of the Barents Sea in the climate system
- Quantifying carbon fluxes in the North Atlantic
- Southern Ocean ventilation and biogeochemical cycles
- Dynamical downscaling in atmosphere and ocean.
A number of recent PhD theses by young Bjerknes scientists have given high quality input to these syntheses and in many ways refined our thinking on how the ocean and atmosphere links to drive climate variability in our region.
The syntheses have come off to a good start and I anticipate that much of the results will be reported at the Bjerknes Centre 10-year anniversary conference in September 2012. The conference will focus on high latitude climate change and will be an arena for internal and international scientists to meet and exchange ideas and results. We expect a large attendance.
Another highlight in 2011 was the delivery of CMIP5 simulations for the next IPCC report, due in 2013, from the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM). The development of this state-of-the-art model was done in collaboration with the Oslo group (primarily met.no), and we anticipate this to be the workhorse for our future climate simulations. A low-resolution version has also been set up for long paleoclimate simulations.
Initial results from the CMIP5 simulations were presented to stakeholders, politicians and media during COP17 in Durban, December 2011. The results received lots of media coverage, indicating that the model simulates historical climate well, with intriguing results on the sensitivity to aerosol forcing and on the urgency of mitigation measures if one were to stop global warming at 2 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures.
This major achievement lays the foundation for the future of the Bjerknes Centre. NorESM will be extensively used in the projects defined under the new Centre for Climate Dynamics at the Bjerknes Centre (SKD). SKD is a result of the CoE achievements and the status they have given to the Bjerknes Centre. Through new long term funding from the ministry of higher education and research, SKD gives the Bjerknes Centre a core activity to fuel its continuation after the termination of the CoE. To mark the formal start of SKD in 2011, we include a special section from SKD in this report, in addition to the normal CoE report. Hence the annual report now consists of both CoE activities and the SKD activities.
At the time of writing, we are well into the final year of the CoE and lots of nice work will be wrapped up and presented to the world in the following months.