In and out. Driven by winds, the Southern Ocean's currents (blue globe) transport CO2 (red) northward. Credit: T. Ito et al., Nature 463 (2010)

story by Helen Hill

In this article we spotlight work by Taka Ito, Molly Woloszyn and Matt Mazloff who have been using MITgcm to study anthropogenic CO₂ transport in the Southern Ocean.

Key to their study is a high-resolution (1/6^o x 1/6^o) estimate of the Southern Ocean circulation, consistent with modern observations, deriving from an MITgcm adjoint calculation, developed as part of the ECCO-GODAE project.  In addition MITgcm’s offline model enabled a ready coupling of the high resolution circulation estimate to a carbon cycle model.

Focussing on intra-annual ACO₂ variability, the team found a clear correlation between the pattern of carbon uptake and oceanic vertical exchange in strong support of the wind-driven circulation as a primary regulator of Southern Ocean ACO₂ transport.

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Planet-in-a-Bottle

Here we look at work by Sai Ravela, John Marshall, Chris Hill, Andrew Wong and Scott Stransky in which they use MITgcm to provide the virtual analogue for a fluid lab experiment in the physical laboratory, as part of an effort to demonstrate how to achieve real-time model-data synthesis, using measurements from a robotically controlled automated sensor system.

Figure 1. The components of the system: The laboratory observatory consists of a physical system: a rotating table on which a tank, camera and control system for illumination are mounted. The computational part consists of a measurement system for velocimetry, a numerical model (MITgcm), and an assimilation system.

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