Ocean

AtlantOS (Optimizing and Enhancing the Integrated Atlantic Ocean Observing System) - Horizon 2020

Web: www.atlantos-h2020.eu

Cordis: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/633211

Project aims: The ocean covers about 70% of earth’s surface. It provides us with key resources such as food, energy and materials, transport, recreational services and regulates weather and climate. A growing and more affluent population increases the environmental pressure on the ocean due to climate change, over exploitation, coastal build up, habitat destruction and pollution. Moreover, there is a growing demand for those marine ecosystem service and the desire to grow an ocean blue-green economy.

An integrated, effective, sustainable, and purposeful in-situ and satellite ocean observing system is needed to document, understand and possibly predict the ocean. Ocean information is critical to record change, facilitate timely warning of ocean-based hazards, initialize ocean system models for weather, climate and environmental forecasting, and to provide knowledge on the ocean dimension of sustainable development, the potential of the blue-green ocean economy and ocean protection and restoration.

So far, Atlantic Ocean observation was undertaken through loosely coordinated, in-situ observing networks, satellite observations and their data management arrangements remain heterogeneous. Thus, there is tremendous opportunity to advance and integrate the systems towards a fully integrated System. While the overall architecture, best practices, essential ocean variables are best articulated at the global level i.e. through the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) and the Blue Planet initiative of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), implementation actions are more efficiently coordinated at the basin scale.
The EU Horizon 2020 project AtlantOS contributed to the above-mentioned challenges by focusing on the Altantic Ocean basin. The project pooled the expertise and work of 57 European and 5 non-European partners (research institutes, universities, marine service providers, multi-institutional organisations, and the private sector) from 18 countries.

Baltic Sea basin Checkpoint  (BSCP)

Project aims: To examine the current data collection, observation, surveying, sampling and data assembly programs in the Baltic Sea basin, assess and demonstrate how they can fit into purpose in the 11 challenge areas in terms of data uncertainty, availability, accessibility and adequacy, and deliver the findings to stakeholders through an internet portal with dynamic mapping features and a stakeholder workshop.

DMI's role: Coordination, data usage and adequacy assessment in wind farm siting, climate change, oil platform leak, coastal protection and eutrophication, data adequacy report.

Efficiensea2

Project aims: Efficiensea2 aims at providing a communication frame work - the "Maritime Cloud" which will enhance information sharing in and around the maritime sector for smarter offshore traffic management. This will be used to improve e-navigation which will benefit safety, emissions, delays etc.

DMI's role: DMI will provide and develope the met-ocean data for Arctic and Baltic seas. This includes ice charts, ice bergs and forecast of a variety of ice/ocean parameters. The data will be included into the maritime cloud.

ICE-ARC  (Link: www.ice-arc.eu)

Project aims: The ICE-ARC project aims to understand and quantify the multiple stresses involved in the change in the Arctic marine environment. Particular focus is on the rapid retreat and collapse of the Arctic sea ice cover and to assess the climatic (ice, ocean, atmosphere and ecosystem), economic and social impacts of these stresses on regional and global scales.

DMI’s role: Ocean processes: ocean mixing and stratification, freshwater fluxes and fjord processes. Ice mass balance buoys for dynamics and thermodynamics, sea ice multisensory monitoring.

ICEMAR (Link: www.icemar.eu)

Project aims: ICEMAR will establish a pilot service delivering sea ice information products directly to ships navigating near or in ice-infested waters in the European Arctic and Baltic Sea.

The overall objective of the ICEMAR project is to establish a pilot down-stream GMES sea ice information service to improve access to existing and new ice information products to aid ships navigating near or within ice-infested waters in the European Arctic (primarily the Greenland and Barents Seas) and the Baltic Sea.

DMI’s role: Consultants on ice information services and supplier of digital ice charts and satellite images.

ice2ice (Link: coming up. See introduction video)

Project aims: ice2ice is the first concerted effort to the tackle question of the cause and future implications of past abrupt climate change in Greenland, the main hypothesis being that the Arctic and sub-Arctic sea ice cover excerts important controls on past and future Greenland temperature and ice sheet variations. In ice2ice this will be done by:

• describing the nature, timing and wxtent of abrupt events across climate archives,
• resolving mechanisms behind the sudden demise of sea ice cover,
• identifying the risk that the ongoing rapid diminution of Arctic sea ice cover could give abrupt GIS changes in the future,
• determining the impacts of such changes for the GIS and Arctic and global climate.

DMI's role: To further develop and apply global and regional Earth system models to be able to conduct experiments addressing the central question of the project. This involves, high resolution atmosphere modeling, a coupled high resolution regional climate model for the Arctic and using the global EC-Earth model. In most cases with an interactive ice sheet model (PISM) being part of the system. 3 PhD positions will form a central contribution to the project, but substantial funding is allocated to permanent staff at DMI.

INTAROS (Integrated Arctic Observation System) www.nersc.no/project/intaros

Project aims: The overall objective of INTAROS is to develop an integrated Arctic Observation System (iAOS) by extending, improving and unifying existing systems in the different regions of the Arctic. INTAROS will have a strong multidisciplinary focus, with tools for integration of data from atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and terrestrial sciences, provided by institutions in Europe, North America and Asia. 
INTAROS is a research and innovation action under the H2020-BG-09 call in 2016.

DMI's role: DMI will generate HYCOM-CICE model data for the Disko Bay-Baffin Bay area. The physical data will be used to force the offline Flexsem model system at Aarhus University.

Jerico (Link: www.jerico-fp7.eu)

Project aims: The project is aiming at providing a reliable valuation to the existing monitoring and observational systems for the European seas. The project is also purposed to form scientific guidance to optimize the existing monitoring and observational systems and to design additional new systems.

DMI’s role: DMI’s role: DMI is responsible for the Baltic Sea. We use data assimilation to evaluate how much the observational systems of T-S profiles and SST can improve the model products. We also evaluate how the new observational system of gliders should be applied in the Baltic Sea.

Mona Lisa 2 (Link: www.monalisaproject.eu)

Project aims: MONALISA 2.0 is a concrete step in the process of further developing the Motorways of the Sea concept by implementing concrete pilot actions and studies that will foster deployment of new maritime services and processes. 

DMI’s role: to develop and provide operational meteo-ocean forecast products and their uncertainties for e-navigation (e.g., route optimization) in European regional seas. Major challenges are to provide high quality and high resolution forecasts in pan-European Seas incl. all narrow straits linking the Seas as well as their uncertainty estimates. DMI's approach is to use a pan-European sea set up (with 10 two-way nested areas) of DMI ocean-ice model HBM to resolve the spatial resolution and coverage problem and to use ensemble method to resolve the uncertainty estimation issue. Both are frontier research in operational oceanography. The forecasting method and skills developed in MONALISA2.0 are also applicable in many other service areas.    

MyOceanFO (Link: www.myocean.eu)

Project aims: To deliver and operate a rigorous, robust and sustainable Ocean Monitoring and Forecasting system of the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service to users for maritime safety, marine resources, marine and coastal environment and climate, seasonal and weather forecasting. It is a continuation of MyOcean 2.

DMI's role: DMI plays an active role in project management, operation, service and science. As part of MyOcean Board and Execom, DMI is involved in MyOceanFO technical and overall management. During the project period, DMI maintains the Version 4 System production and services for the Baltic MFC and SST/Sea Ice TAC to provide operational products of physical and biogeochemical forecast in the Baltic Sea and sea ice and iceberg products in the Arctic region with focus on Greenland waters. The next version (V5) systems of the Baltic MFC and SST/sea ice will be developed, calibrated and implemented furing the project period. Improvements are expected on data assimilation, ice model and biogeochemical model for the Baltic Sea and new sea ice and iceberg products with using Sentinel-1 data. 

NACLIM (Link: www.naclim.eu)

Project aims: The North Atlantic Ocean is one of the most important drivers for the global ocean circulation and its variability on time scales beyond inter-annual. Global climate variability is to a large extent triggered by changes in the North Atlantic sea surface state. The quality and skill of climate predictions depends crucially on a good knowledge of the northern sea surface temperatures (SST) and sea ice distributions. On a regional scale, these parameters strongly impact on weather and climate in Europe, determining precipitation patterns and strengths as well as changes in temperature and wind patterns. NACLIM aims at investigating and quantifying the predictability on interannual to decadal time scales of the climate in the North Atlantic/European sector related to North Atlantic/Arctic Ocean surface state (SST and sea ice) variability and change.

DMI’s role: To quantify the uncertainty of state-of-the-art climate forecasts by evaluating the ability to model the most important oceanic and atmospheric processes in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans by comparing key quantities with observations.

NORTH - NORthern constraints on the Atlantic ThermoHaline circulation 

Project aims: To assess the fundamental structure and operation of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation's northern limb and thus constrain its mean state, variance and sensitivity related to observed and projected climate change including possible feedbacks.

DMI’s role: To construct analytical models of northern THC that account for its observed structure, constrain variance and identify possible ocean feedbacks.

SalienSEAS (Enhancing the Saliency of climate services for marine mobility Sectors in European Arctic Seas)

Project aims: 
• to understand the mobility patterns, constraints, challenges, decision-making contexts and information needs of end-users in different European Arctic marine sectors;
• to develop and apply participatory tools for co-producing salient weather and sea ice services with Arctic marine end-users; and
• to co-develop user-relevant and sector specific weather and sea ice services and dissemination systems dedicated to Arctic marine end-users tailored to key social, environmental and economic needs.

OSI SAF (Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facilities (SAF))

Link: www.osi-saf.org )

Project aims: Project aims: For complementing its Central Facilities capability in Darmstadt and taking more benefit from specialized expertise in Member States, EUMETSAT created Satellite Application Facilities (SAFs) based on co-operation between several institutes and hosted by a National Meteorological Service.

The Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility (OSI SAF) is an answer to the common requirements of meteorology and oceanography for comprehensive information on the ocean-atmosphere interface. One of the objectives of the OSI SAF is to produce, control and distribute OSI SAF operational products in near real-time using available satellite data. 

DMI’s role: DMI is part of the High Latitude center (in cooperation with met.no) responsible for the production and distribution of the OSI SAF Sea Ice products, in particular: global sea ice concentration, global sea ice emissivity, medium resolution ice drift, and ice surface temperature.

WOW (Western valley OverfloW)

Project aims: The WOW project is a cooperation between Havstovan (Faroe Marine Research Institute) and the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) to measure the overflow of cold water from the Arctic into the World Ocean through the Western Valley of the Iceland-Faroe Ridge, to allow the effects of this flow to be adequately simulated in climate model projections of the thermohaline circulation and the heat transport towards the Arctic, and to design a low-cost monitoring system for this flow.

DMI's role: Combine results from the field experiment and historic data to extend the results to long-term estimates and to evaluate a recently proposed relationship between the WV-overflow and sea level east of Iceland. Develop methods to allow more accurate projections of oceanic heat transport towards the Arctic in climate models.