Collaborative Research: Leveraging the AMOC arrays and models to understand heat and freshwater transports in the North Atlantic

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The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is a large-scale redistribution of heat and freshwater that impacts weather and climate. This project will use numerical models of the ocean circulation to examine the long record of observations from moorings deployed in the North Atlantic. The goals include diagnosing the mass, heat, and freshwater fluxes of the AMOC and assessing the relationships between observations of ocean properties at the moorings and ocean or atmospheric properties at other locations. The project will also determine the optimal mooring array design for observing the AMOC. The project includes outreach to middle and high school students entered around the North Atlantic Ocean and its unique role in climate.This project will use a suite of ocean models, including the ECCO variational data assimilation model system, to examine the long time-series of observations from North Atlantic mooring arrays (including OSNAP and RAPID-MOCHA). The goals include: assimilation of Atlantic array data into global and regional ocean state estimates to assess the value they add to independent elements of the Global Ocean Observing System; diagnosing relationship of observed mass, heat and freshwater transport variability at the arrays to causal atmospheric forcing; identification of the potential for the array data to serve as proxies for remote, unobserved variables or indices of key oceanic and climatic relevance; and determining the optimal redesign of the OSNAP array for observing AMOC. The proposed research will complement ongoing major investments by NSF in observing the ocean role in climate through the AMOC and promises to ensure that future investments are as effective as possible.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.