OCEAN CIRCULATION. Observing the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation yields a decade of inevitable surprises.

The importance of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) heat transport for climate is well acknowledged. Climate models predict that the AMOC will slow down under global warming, with substantial impacts, but measurements of ocean circulation have been inadequate to evaluate these predictions. Observations over the past decade have changed that situation, providing a detailed picture of variations in the AMOC. These observations reveal a surprising degree of AMOC variability in terms of the intraannual range, the amplitude and phase of the seasonal cycle, the interannual changes in strength affecting the ocean heat content, and the decline of the AMOC over the decade, both of the latter two exceeding the variations seen in climate models.

Emergent features due to grid-cell biology: synchronisation in biophysical models.

Modelling studies of upper ocean phenomena, such as that of the spatial and temporal patchiness in plankton distributions, typically employ coupled biophysical models, with biology in each grid-cell represented by a plankton ecosystem model. It has not generally been considered what impact the choice of grid-cell ecosystem model, from the many developed in the literature, might have upon the results of such a study. We use the methods of synchronisation theory, which is concerned with ensembles of interacting oscillators, to address this question, considering the simplest possible case of a chain of identically represented interacting plankton grid-cells. It is shown that the ability of the system to exhibit stably homogeneous (fully synchronised) dynamics depends crucially upon the choice of biological model and number of grid-cells, with dynamics changing dramatically at a threshold strength of mixing between grid-cells. Consequently, for modelling studies of the ocean the resolution chosen, and therefore number of grid-cells used, could drastically alter the emergent features of the model. It is shown that chaotic ecosystem dynamics, in particular, should be used with care.

Eddy variability east of Madagascar.

A strong but variable western boundary current flows south along the east coast of Madagascar, and at the island's southern end it interacts with eddies propagating zonally from the east. These two routes of variability are compared using altimetric sea-surface-height data and dynamic height from a high-resolution numerical model. The effects on biological productivity are also discussed.

Rapid climate change: scientific challenges and the new NERC programme.

In this paper the scientific challenges of observing, modelling, understanding and predicting rapid changes in climate are discussed, with a specific focus on the role of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation. The palaeo and present-day observational and modelling studies being carried out to meet these challenges, under the aegis of a new NERC Rapid Climate Change thematic programme (RAPID), are outlined. In particular, the paper describes the work being done to monitor changes in the meridional overturning circulation of the North Atlantic. The paper concludes with some speculative comments about potential mechanisms for rapid changes.