Dense Water Transport Off Arctic Continental Shelves: Numerical Studies of Shelf-Basin Interaction

9508333查平博士论文奖给加州伯克利大学将支持一个项目，以确定不同的植物生长形式整合控制水和能量平衡的机制在生态系统水平在阿拉斯加北坡北极苔原。 这项研究是重要的，因为它将提供一个解释如何植物生长形式的属性可以按比例放大到生态系统水平的水和能量通量。 这项研究将与一项更大规模的全球气候变化研究一起进行，该研究正在审查来自冻土带的温室气体的区域通量。 该项目提供了一个独特的机会，以确定在气候敏感的北极苔原的温室气体的区域输出/吸收的背景下，植物生长习惯对能源平衡的作用。 该研究为生态系统对气候变化引起的温室气体变化的响应提供了新的信息。 *** 伍兹霍尔海洋研究所的Gawarkiewicz调查人员将进行研究，以增加计算机模型模拟的复杂性，模拟离开北极大陆架并流向北冰洋深处的密集高盐度水的形成。 这些流动能够将营养物和沉积物从大陆架带到深海，并可能在大气和深海之间的热量传递中发挥重要作用。 跨大陆架气流形成过程中的波动可能会影响大西洋产生的北冰洋温暖深水的热量转移。 来自温暖的深层气流的热量控制着气候敏感的北冰洋海冰的形成。 改进后的计算机模型将首次考虑到沿岸流、地形复杂性和大陆坡水团分层的影响，使模型开始接近真实的世界条件。 改进的模型对于了解北极海洋-大气-冰系统如何影响全球气候以及如何受全球气候影响是必要的。 *** ??

9508333 Chapin A Doctoral Dissertation Award to the University of California Berkeley will support a project to determine the mechanisms by which different plant growth forms integrate to control water and energy balance at the ecosystem level in Arctic tundra on the Alaskan North Slope. This study is important because it will provide an explanation of how plant growth form properties can be scaled up to ecosystem level water and energy fluxes. The study will take place in conjunction with a larger Global Climate Change study that is examining the regional flux of greenhouse gases from the tundra. This project provides a unique opportunity to determine the role of plant growth habit on energy balances in the climatically sensitive Arctic tundra within the context of the regional output/uptake of greenhouse gases. The study amy provide new information on ecosystem response to climatically-induced changes of greenhouse gases. *** 9422292 Gawarkiewicz Investigators at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will undertake research to increase the complexity of computer model simulations of the formation of dense high-salinity water that leaves the Arctic continental shelf and flows to the deep Arctic Ocean. The flows are capable of carring nutrients and sediments from the continental shelf to the deeper ocean and may play a major role in the transfer of heat between the atmosphere and deep ocean. Fluctations in the formation of the cross-shelf flow could affect the transfer of heat from warm deep water in the Arctic Ocean that is produced in the Atlantic Ocean. Heat from that warm deep flow controls the formation of sea ice in the climatically sensitive Arctic Ocean. The improved computer models will for the first time take into account the effects of coastal currents, topographic complexities, and water-mass stratification of the continental slopes so that the models may begin to approach real world conditions. The improved models are necessary to understand how the Arctic ocean-atmosphere-ice system operates to affect, and be affected by, global climates. *** ??