Southern Ocean Carbon and Heat Impact on Climate

ACRONYM
SO-CHIC
Title
Southern Ocean Carbon and Heat Impact on Climate
General information
The Southern Ocean regulates the global climate by controlling heat and carbon exchanges between the atmosphere and the ocean. It is responsible for about 60-90% of the excess heat (i.e. associated with anthropogenic climate change) absorbed by the World Oceans each year, and is also recognised to largely control decadal scale variability of Earth carbon budget, with key implications for decision makers and regular global stocktake agreed as part of the Paris agreement. Despite such pivotal climate importance, its representation in global climate model represents one of the main weaknesses of climate simulation and projection because too little is known about the underlying processes. Limitations come both from the lack of observations in this extreme environment and its inherent sensitivity to intermittent small-scale processes that are not captured in current Earth system models.
Start
November, 2019
End
October, 2023
Funding (total)
7989000
Funding (GEOMAR)
356000
Funding body / Programme
    EU / HORIZON 2020, Southern Ocean Carbon and Heat Impact on Climate
Coordination
Sorbonne Universite (), France
Contact
Partners
Sorbonne University, France
University of Southampton, UK
University of Reading, UK
UK Research and Innovation, UK
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Germany
Norwegian Research Centre (NORCE), Norway
ETH Zurich, Switzerland
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
University of Oxford, UK
ETT, Italy
European Polar Board (EPB), Netherlands
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Ghana
National University of Ireland Galway (NUI), Ireland
National Oceanography Centre (NOC), UK