Text by Jill Johannessen and Beatriz Balino. Photo by Andreas Born.
Professor Andrew Watson is, along with Michael Schulz, Detlef Stammer and Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen, participating in the annual two-day seminar arranged by the Centre for Climate Dynamics. They are among the international experts integrating the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) of the SKD. This event, which this year took place on October 17 and 18, had SKD scientists presenting scientific highlights spanning from climate change and predictability to sensitivity and thresholds of the climate system, regional impacts and extremes, sea level changes, the carbon cycle and marine ecosystems. The SAC reviews the work, comments and gives advice to work done and on scientific strategy.
- Every year we are here, trying to find the strengths and weaknesses. It is fantastic to have a sustained, well funded, and innovate group here in Bergen. It is one of the best research milieus in the world. The research undertaken is diverse, it tackles many aspects, and the tight connection between observations, theoretical work and modelling is not only outstanding but also quite unique, says Watson. He has been associated with the Bergen milieu since the beginning of the Bjerknes Centre more than ten years ago.
SKD on track
SKD´s director, Tore Furevik, is also pleased with the progress over the past year.
- There is a lot of exciting research going on at the Centre. In particular, we have put great efforts into the development of the Norwegian Earth System model, which has performed global climate model simulations to the 5th IPCC assessment report (AR5), says Furevik.
Furevik also emphasises that the past year, the Centre managed to acquire a considerable amount of research grants, notably from the Research Council of Norway, which translates into new recruitment positions which has attracted many young and talented researchers to Bergen.One of them is postdoc Iselin Medhaug.
- I’m applying climate models to study the changes in the circulation of the ocean in the North Atlantic. Ocean currents bring heat from the tropics to our regions in the high latitudes and eventually to the Arctic contributing, amongst other things, to the melting of sea ice, says Medhaug.
- In my research I’m using a relative untraditional approach, which consist in “deploying” virtual drifters in a virtual Atlantic Ocean simulated by climate models. The way the drifters float around into paths helps me learn about the circulation and heat transport in the region, she adds.
Mapping CO2-uptake in world oceans
The research group on carbon cycle, lead by Are Olsen and Jerry Tjiputra, has contributed largly to the IPCC 5AR through many peer review articles. The carbon cycle plays a pivotal role in the global climate system in that 50% of the man-made CO2-emissions are soaked up by the oceans and land surface.
- A key task that we are currently working on, in collaboration with international colleagues, is one the one hand, to estimate how much of the CO2 emitted to the atmosphere has been absorbed by the oceans, and on the other hand, how much the carbon content in the ocean is presently changing in response to current climate variability, says Olsen.
The investigation of current change in ocean carbon content is based on a large database, SOCAT, which includes all carbon measurements from the surface ocean from approximately 2500 cruises in all world oceans. This database can be accesed by anyone at www.socat.info
- The Bjerknes climate research community has been heavily involved in putting this database together and the Norwegian effort was decisive to turn it into a reality, he adds.
Prof Watson endorses the statement.
- In addition, they have taken the lead and pulled together the global synthesis of the data, all the measures in the world, says Watson who has a background in biogeochemistry. Further, he underscores the importance of these observations for our knowledge of how much carbon dioxide the oceans are taking up, which is a key element for understanding how the earth is changing and to test models that produce future scenarios.