Collaborative Research Type 2 - MOBY: Modeling Ocean Variability and Biogeochemical Cycles

知识价值：该项目（MOBY）侧重于气候系统海洋成分的年代际可预测性，包括物理和生物地球化学方面。它将促进对海洋中响应和反馈全球气候的耦合物理、化学和生物过程的理解。中尺度上的物理和生物地球化学活动，即海洋中大部分动能所在的尺度，被认为在控制海洋在年际到年代际的时间尺度上将热量和碳隔离到其内部的能力方面起着重要作用。因此，在我们对年代际气候预测有信心之前，必须解决或理解中尺度及其与生物地球化学循环的相互作用。然而，当前一代的海洋气候模型不能解决中尺度问题，而且，如果它们完全代表生物地球化学，也只包括几个“隔间”。为了应对这一挑战，麻省理工学院、伍兹霍尔海洋研究所和国家大气研究中心的科学家们提出了一种多尺度建模方法，将区域高分辨率模型嵌入到全球粗尺度海洋模型中。由此产生的数值“变焦镜头”将部署在气候变率的关键区域，试图解决海洋生态系统所经历的中尺度和亚中尺度环境，但嵌入到全球模式中。然后，生物地球化学循环模式将被覆盖，以研究生态系统与完全分辨的中尺度湍流的相互作用。将采用“自组装”生态系统模型，该模型有能力表示生态系统对不断变化的环境和变异模式的响应。最后，研究对热/碳吸收和生态系统群落结构的综合影响。这些计算的全球背景将使我们能够对中尺度物理、化学和生物相互作用的校正效应作出合理的推断，并为在年代际变率和气候变化预估中使用的粗分辨率耦合气候模式中参数化这些效应的策略提供信息。这些重叠的活动将集中在三个自然变率强的区域，这些区域有强烈的小尺度变率：赤道太平洋、南大洋和亚热带西北大西洋。相关的变率模态分别是ENSO、南环模和北大西洋涛动。更广泛的影响：拟议的研究是我们理解和模拟海洋和海洋生物的关键，海洋生物在地球历史上的进化，全球碳和营养循环，海洋自然资源的保护和开发，渔业管理，地球工程（为试图改善人为影响的利弊决策提供信息）和海洋酸化，以及许多其他重大挑战。这些合作努力将为参与研究的研究生和本科生提供培训和学习的机会。麻省理工学院/WHOI联合项目的一名在读博士生和另外两名学生将得到本项目的支持。研究人员还将尝试通过WHOI暑期学生奖学金/NSF本科生研究经验项目吸引本科生参与该项目。最后，除了项目参与者（来自三个合作院校的学生、博士后和科学家）的年度小组会议外，在项目的第2年和第4年，将举行为期两天的“社区研讨会”，向从事MOBY项目所涵盖的广泛科学主题的更广泛的科学家小组提供信息，并从他们那里获得信息。

Intellectual Merit: This project (MOBY) focuses on decadal predictability of the ocean component of the climate system, both in its physical and biogeochemical aspects. It will advance understanding of the coupled physical, chemical and biological processes in the ocean that respond to, and feedback on, the global climate. Physical and biogeochemical activity on the mesoscale, the scale at which most of the kinetic energy in the ocean resides, is thought to play a major role in controlling the ability of the ocean to sequester heat and carbon in to its interior on interannual to decadal timescales. The mesoscale and its interaction with biogeochemical cycles must therefore be either resolved, or understood and parameterized, before we can have confidence in decadal climate predictions. The current generation of ocean climate models, however, do not resolve the mesoscale, and, if they represent biogeochemistry at all, only a few 'compartments' are included.To address this challenge, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, propose a multi-scale modeling approach in which regional, high-resolution models are embedded in global, coarser-scale ocean models. The resulting numerical 'zoom lenses' will be deployed in key regions of climate variability in an attempt to resolve the mesoscale and submesoscale environment experienced by ocean ecosystems, but embedded in a global model. Then, models of biogeochemical cycles will be overlain to study the interaction of ecosystems with fully-resolved mesoscale turbulence. 'Self-assembling' ecosystem models will be employed that have the capacity to represent the response of the ecosystem to the changing environment and modes of variability. Finally, the integrated effects on heat/carbon uptake, and ecosystem community structure will be studied. The global context of these calculations will allow plausible inferences to be made about the rectified effects of mesoscale physical, chemical and biological interactions and inform strategies to parameterize them in the coarser-resolution coupled climate models used in projections of decadal variability and climate change.These overlapping activities will be focused on three regions of strong natural variability where there is vigorous small-scale variability: the equatorial Pacific, the Southern Ocean and the subtropical northwest Atlantic. The associated modes of variability are ENSO, the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), respectively. Broader Impacts: The proposed research is key to our understanding and modeling the ocean and life within it, the evolution of life within the ocean over earth history, the global cycle of carbon and nutrients, the conservation and exploitation of the ocean's natural resources, management of fisheries, geoengineering (to inform decisions about the pros and cons of attempting to ameliorate anthropogenic impacts) and ocean acidification, among many other grand challenges. These collaborative efforts will provide training and learning opportunities to the graduate and undergraduate students participating in the research. A current Ph.D. student in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program will be supported by this project, along with two further students. The investigators will also attempt to entrain undergraduates into the project through the WHOI Summer Student Fellowship/NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates program. Finally, in addition to yearly group meetings of the project participants (students, post-docs and scientists from the three collaborating institutions), two-day 'community workshops' in years 2 and 4 of the project will be held to inform, and be informed by a wider group of scientists working on the broad science themes embraced by the MOBY project.