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Introduction
Changes in the amount and location of river and meltwater discharge to the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans could profoundly affect the thermohaline circulation and thus the climate of Europe. Abrupt changes in ocean circulation, and the location of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) formation, have been recorded during the last 21,000 years. Palaeodata and modelling suggest these changes may have been caused by ice-sheet dynamics (changing meltwater inputs, blocking/unblocking of river channels) and by climate change affecting continental runoff and river discharge. A concerted effort is planned to understand past changes in NADW formation and to explore the risk of comparable changes taking place in the future. Our approach involves using two efficient coupled ocean-atmosphere-vegetation models to explore the impacts of a range of possible freshwater-flux scenarios representing different intervals during the last deglaciation. New reconstructions of Eurasian ice-sheet deglaciation history will be used to inform the choice of scenarios. The plausibility of the simulations will be evaluated using a 4D reconstruction of the ocean during the deglaciation and palaeoenvironmental records of regional climates over the northern continents, prior to using the models to examine the consequences of potential future changes in freshwater fluxes on ocean circulation and climate.
Project Duration: 25 Aug 2005 - 24 Aug 2009
This project is funded by UK NERC, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and the Research Council of Norway - Grant Ref. NE/C509558/1 - through the RAPID Climate Change NERC directed mode programme.
Access to data and information
Data and software supplied from this project to the BADC will be stored in the BADC RAPID archive.
Access to the archive is currently restricted to participants to this particular project. If you are a programme participant and would like to access this RAPID project data, then please apply for access* to the RAPID data.
You will be requested to abide by the
RAPID Climate Change Data Policy.
Data management, availability and use are ruled by the
RAPID Climate Change Programme Data Management Plan
(PDF document).
Access to Hadley Centre model data held at the BADC is subject to the signature of the NERC-Met Office agreement.
* Note that to apply for access to this dataset, you should first register as a BADC user (anyone is allowed to register). If you are already a registered BADC user, skip this step. If you have forgotten your BADC user ID and/or password, please contact the BADC helpdesk at badc@rl.ac.uk. To register as a new BADC user, please follow the instructions online.
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