Project Details
Projekt
Sea Surface Topography and Mass Transport of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current
Applicants
Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Bosch; Professor Dr.-Ing. Reiner Rummel; Dr.-Ing. Mirko Scheinert; Dr. Jens Schröter
Subject Area
Geophysics and Geodesy
Term
from 2006 to 2017
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 30184757
The study aims at the determination of the absolute, but temporally changing ocean circulation flow field and of associated mass and heat transports. It is based on a state-of-the-art circulation model assimilating geodetic data of the dynamic sea surface topography (SST) and oceanographic in-situ data. The ocean model is focused on the Atlantic sector of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the Weddell Sea. This is one of the most dynamic ocean areas and one of the most critical regions for global climate, due to the impact of circumpolar bottom water production on global deep sea circulation. The high resolution regional model is embedded into a coarser global model to avoid systematic distortions. The geodetic SST, a small up to 2 m deviation between sea level and equipotential surface, is determined with an accuracy of a few cm from the new geoid models from the GRACE and later GOCE satellite missions combined with a long-term time series of sea surface height from multi-mission satellite altimetry. The accuracy level of these satellite data enables for the first time the practical implementation of the proposed approach. The geodetic focus is on a maximum spatial resolution and accuracy in SST, including thorough error estimation, rigorous error propagation and adaptation to the ocean model finite element grid. The dynamically consistent ocean model assimilation is based on a combined geodetic-oceanographic cost function. The model input and output are iteratively compared to assess the consistency of each of the data sets and the parameterization of the ocean model.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
