RAPID - Round 2 - Predictability of rapid climate change associated with the Atlantic thermohaline circulation Project

Introduction

Forecasts of the future behaviour of the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation (THC) are needed to inform policy on climate change. Such forecasts must be probabilistic taking into account the principal sources of uncertainty. It is not possible to sample exhaustively all sources of uncertainty because the number of degrees of freedom is too great. Consequently a future forecasting system will be reliant on strategies to identify those dimensions of uncertainty that are most important. This project will develop an objective methodology to identify the dominant sources of uncertainty in General Circulation Model predictions of the THC. Perturbations to oceanic initial conditions and climate model parameters that generate the most rapid change in the THC and related aspects of climate will be identified. These perturbations will be used to produce an early probabilistic forecast for the behaviour of the THC up to 2100. The results will also feed directly into the next generation of ensemble climate predictions being developed at the UK Hadley Centre.

Project Duration: 1 Jan 2005 - 18 Sep 2008

This project is funded by NERC - Lead Grant Ref. NE/C509174/1 - 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.

Citation

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Who to contact

This RAPID project is led by Prof Rowan Sutton of the University of Reading, with co-investigators at the University of Oxford and at the National Oceanography Centre.

General queries about these pages or browsing the data should be directed to the BADC Support Line.

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