National Center for Computational Sciences

PI: Synte Peacock, University of Chicago

The goal of this project is to complete the first-ever centennial-scale eddy-resolving global ocean simulation, incorporating a suite of tracer experiments designed to yield fundamental information on timescales and mechanisms of transport in the ocean. This experiment will be followed by an ensemble of simulations spanning the period of intensive measurements over the last 20 years. Results of these simulations will be used to answer the following questions: At what rate and by which pathways will material entering the ocean at its surface be distributed throughout its interior? What are the relative roles of the broad-scale time-mean flow, small-scale structures in the mean flow, and turbulent eddies in transporting material through the ocean interior? Are current estimates of ocean uptake of radiatively important anthropogenic trace gases (such as carbon dioxide) biased by an incomplete representation of ocean eddy transports? What level of variability in observed ocean tracer distributions can be expected from intrinsic variations of the flow due to instability processes and from interannual to decadal variability in the atmospheric forcing of the ocean?