How understanding storms reduces Southern Ocean heat and CO2 uptake uncertainty

Human emissions of greenhouse gases have increased atmospheric concentrations of heat and CO2 considerably.

However, the global ocean absorbs an important amount of this excess atmospheric heat (93%) and CO2 (22%), preventing severe climate warming.

Yet, we do not understand how this occurs, particularly in the Southern Ocean, where complex air-sea interactions are not fully understood and coarse-grid climate models show large uncertainties. This has negative implications for our ability to predict the impacts of climate change. In the Southern Ocean, storms are known to be critical links between atmospheric forcing and ocean heat and CO2 uptake.

This project aims to reduce these uncertainties by investigating the underlying parameters driving air-sea heat and CO2 exchange in the Southern Ocean.

Using over a decade of mooring data, this project will investigate the role of storms in the variability and trends of air-sea heat and CO2 fluxes.

Then, using a multi-pronged collaborative approach, I will use novel field techniques to make direct measurements of air-sea heat and CO2 fluxes in the sea-ice impacted region of the Southern Ocean.

The new field observations will help us understand the impact of small-scale ocean dynamics and synoptic scale storms on air-sea interactions.

I will use this new understanding to refine current air-sea flux formulas to improve our representation of air-sea interactions in climate models, leading to more accurate climate projections.