Attribution of ocean climate change signals in the Atlantic.

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The proposal aims to identify observational signals associated with changes in the overturning circulation and heat transport in the North Atlantic, exploiting the development of the monitoring system put in place by international programmes and the UK RAPID monitoring initiative. Our study aims to analyse both existing historical data obtained over the last 50 years and the latest emerging observations. Our approach is to apply a forward circulation model with an accompanying adjoint for the North Atlantic in order to identify how signals in the data are formed by external forcing and ocean physics. The adjoint provides a highly effective method of identifying the sensitivity of model signals and optimising the model towards selected data signals, which will be used together to identify how signals in the data are controlled. The study will focus on several themes: identifying how data signals along the western boundary and ocean interior are controlled using the adjoint approach; identifying the role of geostrophic eddies in limiting the adjoint approach; mapping hydrographic changes along the margins of the Atlantic from historical data and identifying the propagation of coastal wave modes from altimetric data.