The UK Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program (UK-OSNAP)

英国-OSNAP：综述什么是气候？太阳的能量在赤道地区不断地加热地球，而在北极和南极，地球被冻结并不断失去热量。洋流和大气天气共同将热量从赤道输送到两极，以保持地球区域温度的平衡。因此，气候就是洋流和天气带来的热量。地球的气候正在变暖：地球的平均温度正在以每一百年约0.75摄氏度的速度上升，这是由于大气中的二氧化碳捕获了通常会流失到太空的热量。我们能预测未来气候可能发生怎样的变化吗？有一句古老的谚语听起来很正确：“气候是你所期望的；天气是你得到的。”一个夏天的炎热天气并不能告诉我们气候正在变化，因为天气每天甚至每年都是如此多变。我们需要在很长一段时间内对所有天气进行平均，以确定气候是否正在变化。在我们的后代面临后果之前，我们想知道气候是否正在变化，这就是我们的项目发挥作用的地方。气候科学家的终极抱负不亚于提前10年预测气候。这可能吗？毕竟，我们知道，天气预报在三到五天后变得有些不可靠。答案是肯定的，因为有海洋。缓慢而深沉的洋流给海洋带来了从几年到数百年的记忆，而海洋将这种记忆传递给了气候。如果我们现在知道海洋的状况，那么我们就有很好的机会了解这将如何影响未来几年的气候。我们给自己设定了一项艰巨的任务，但将得到美国、加拿大、德国、荷兰、法罗群岛、冰岛、丹麦和苏格兰同事的帮助。我们将连续测量从加拿大到格陵兰再到苏格兰(亚极地北大西洋)的海洋环流。这是以前从未尝试过的。我们之所以选择北大西洋，是因为这里的环流对整个地球气候都很重要。这是因为在北大西洋的高纬度地区，以及它所连接的北冰洋，海洋可以通过释放储存在其中的大量热量，有效地将其记忆铭刻在大气中。在英国，我们与加拿大和西伯利亚处于同一纬度，设得兰群岛比格陵兰和阿拉斯加的南端更北，但大西洋环流使英国比其他国家高5-10摄氏度。我们可以通过部署可靠的自我记录仪器来测量整个大洋。我们将使用系泊设备(锚定在海床上的钢丝，由充气玻璃球支撑在水中)来将仪器固定在重要位置。从2014年到2018年，每年我们都会使用船只找回系泊位置和数据，然后将仪器放回水中。我们还将使用令人兴奋的新技术。自主水下海滑器将从表面飞行到1公里深，执行为期一年的海洋探测任务，从苏格兰到向西2000公里进入大西洋。海滑机每天通过卫星将数据传输到我们的实验室，飞行员可以远程驾驶滑翔机。此外，全球还有一支由3000个漂流浮标组成的船队，不断测量海洋顶部1公里的深度。卫星提供了重要的海洋表面测量数据。有了这些新的测量，我们将发现海洋携带的热量在项目的几个月和几年中是如何变化的，我们将使用复杂的计算机模型来帮助解释我们的发现。

UK-OSNAP: SummaryWhat is climate? The sun's energy is constantly heating the Earth in equatorial regions, while in the Arctic and Antarctic the Earth is frozen and constantly losing heat. Ocean currents and atmospheric weather together move heat from the equator towards the poles to keep the Earth's regional temperatures in balance. So climate is simply the heat moved by ocean currents and by the weather. Earth's climate is warming: the average temperature of the Earth is rising at a rate of about 0.75 degrees Centigrade per hundred years, caused by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere trapping heat that is normally lost to space. Can we forecast how climate might change in the future?There is an old adage that rings true: "Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get". Hot weather in one summer does not tell us that climate is changing because the weather is so variable day-to-day and even year-to-year. We need to average over all the weather for a long time to decide if the climate is changing. We would like to know if the climate is changing before our descendants face the consequences, and that is where our project comes in. The ultimate ambition of climate scientists is nothing less than forecasting climate up to 10 years in advance.Is this possible? After all we know weather forecasts become somewhat unreliable after three to five days. The answer is yes because of the ocean. Slow and deep currents give the ocean a memory from years to hundreds of years, and the ocean passes this memory onto the climate. If we know the condition of the ocean now, then we have a good chance of understanding how this will affect the climate in years to come.We have set ourselves a huge task, but will be helped by colleagues in the US, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Denmark and Scotland. We will continuously measure the ocean circulation from Canada to Greenland to Scotland (the subpolar North Atlantic Ocean). This has never been attempted before. We have chosen the North Atlantic because the circulation here is important for the whole of Earth's climate. This is because in the high latitudes of the North Atlantic, and the Arctic Ocean that it connects to, the ocean can efficiently imprint its memory on the atmosphere by releasing the huge amounts of heat stored in it. In the UK we are on the same latitude as Canada and Siberia, and the Shetland Islands are further north than the southern tips of Greenland and Alaska, but the Atlantic Ocean circulation keeps the UK 5-10 degrees Centigrade warmer than those other countries.We can measure across an entire ocean by deploying reliable, self-recording instruments. We will use moorings (wires anchored to the seabed and supported in the water by air-filled glass spheres) to hold the instruments in the important locations. Every year from 2014 to 2018 we will use ships to recover the moorings and the data, then put the instruments back in the water. We will also use exciting new technology. Autonomous underwater Seagliders will fly from the surface to 1 km depth on year long-missions surveying the ocean, from Scotland to 2000 km westward into the Atlantic. The Seagliders transmit their data to our lab every day via satellite, and the pilot can fly the glider remotely. Also there is a global fleet of 3000 drifting floats to continuously measure the top 1 km of the ocean. Satellites provide important measurements of the ocean surface. With these new measurements, we will find how the heat carried by the ocean changes through the months and years of the project, and we will use complex computer models to help explain what we find.