Ocean Regulation of Climate by Heat and Carbon Sequestration and Transports (ORCHESTRA)

气候变化是地球上人类和生命面临的最紧迫的问题之一。需要对未来气候变化进行更好的预测，以便采取措施减少其影响并应对其影响。然而，要改进这些预测，需要更好地了解全球气候系统是如何发挥作用的，而这种知识目前还不完整。一个关键的差距涉及对海洋吸收热量和碳的理解。由于全球变暖，目前地球系统中存在的额外热量中，超过90%进入了海洋，自20世纪70年代以来，上层和深海的热量都明显增加。此外，全球海洋是气候系统中最大的碳库，吸收了自工业革命以来产生的额外碳排放的近三分之一。大气中的气候变化受到这些过程的强烈缓和，如果没有这些过程，气候变化将显著加剧。南大洋--环绕南极洲的广阔海洋--在这方面至关重要。由于其环流的性质，其物理和化学性质，以及它与地球其他地区的联系，它约占海洋碳吸收的一半，约占热吸收的四分之三。然而，由于其偏远和恶劣的环境，海上暴风雨，一些地方厚厚的海冰，以及冬季长时间的黑暗，南大洋也是世界上测量最少、了解最少的海洋。这种缺乏理解的后果之一是，许多用于建立未来气候预测的模型中对南大洋的描述不适合我们的目的。我们的项目，海洋热能和碳封存与运输气候调节(管弦乐队)，代表了英国许多主要环境研究机构的联系，他们将与国家和国际合作伙伴合作解决这些问题。我们建议将数据收集、新颖的分析和计算机模拟相结合，从根本上提高我们测量、理解和预测南大洋环流和在全球气候中的作用的能力。数据收集将包括跨越南大洋大西洋部分的大型船舶探险，以确定所有不同海洋层(近表层、中间层、深海层)的盆地规模的热量和碳的输送。它将包括使用新技术和无人驾驶飞行器在比船舶本身所能允许的更长的时间和更大的区域内收集数据，以及使用研究飞机飞行来确定在所有不同的海冰条件下大气和海洋之间具有气候重要性的热量和碳的转移。了解到这些实地活动将产生的新认识，将提出和测试对海洋模型的改进，并将改进交付给气候建模人员，以便能够产生更好的未来预测。显然，这些发展是迫切需要的-通过改进气候预测所获得的好处很难被夸大，更有效的应对气候变化的战略变得可行，并为工业、商业和其他部门做出更好的规划假设。据估计，南大洋碳汇的价值最近达到数万亿美元，但其未来如何变化仍存在数十亿美元的不确定性：因此，缩小这种不确定性是一项强有力的经济优先事项，也是一项科学和社会优先事项。

Climate change is one of the most urgent issues facing humanity and life on Earth. Better predictions of future climate change are needed, so that measures to reduce its impact and cope with its effects can be put in place. However, improving these predictions requires better knowledge of how the global climate system functions, and this knowledge is currently incomplete. A critical gap concerns understanding of the uptake of heat and carbon by the oceans. Over 90% of the extra heat now present in the Earth System because of global warming has entered the ocean, with strong increases in both the upper and deep ocean apparent since the 1970s. Further, the global ocean is the largest reservoir of carbon in the climate system, and has absorbed nearly one-third of the extra carbon emissions produced since the industrial revolution. Climate change in the atmosphere is strongly moderated by these processes, and would be dramatically greater without them.The Southern Ocean - the vast ocean that encircles Antarctica - is critically important in this regard. Because of the nature of its circulation, its physical and chemical properties, and its connections with the rest of the globe, it accounts for around half of the oceanic uptake of carbon, and around three-quarters of the heat uptake. However, because of its remoteness and hostile environment, with stormy seas, heavy sea ice in places, and long periods of darkness in winter, the Southern Ocean is also the least-measured and least-understood ocean in the world. One consequence of this lack of understanding is that the representations of the Southern Ocean in many of the models used to create future climate projections are not fit for purpose.Our project, Ocean Regulation of Climate by Heat and Carbon Sequestration and Transports (ORCHESTRA), represents a linking together of many of the major environmental research institutes in the UK, who will work with national and international partners to address these issues. We propose a combination of data collection, novel analyses and computer simulations to radically improve our ability to measure, understand and predict the circulation and role in global climate of the Southern Ocean. Data collection will include major ship-based expeditions across the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean to determine the basin-scale transports of heat and carbon in all the different ocean layers (near-surface, intermediate, abyssal). It will include the use of novel technology and unmanned vehicles to collect data over much longer periods and much greater areas than ships alone could allow, and flights with research aircraft to determine climatically-important transfers of heat and carbon between the atmosphere and ocean in all different conditions of sea ice. Informed by the new understanding that these field campaigns will produce, improvements to ocean models will be proposed and tested, and the improvements delivered to climate modellers so that better future projections can be produced.It is clear that these developments are required urgently - the benefits to be gained by improving climate prediction are difficult to overstate, with more effective strategies for dealing with climate change becoming feasible, and better planning assumptions made possible for industry, commerce and other sectors. The value of the Southern Ocean carbon sink was recently estimated to be in the trillions of dollars, but with uncertainty in the billions concerning how it will change in future: narrowing this uncertainty is thus a strong economic priority, as well as a scientific and societal one.