Description: Ocean acidification has emerged over the last two decades as one of the largest threats to marine organisms and ecosystems. However, most research efforts on ocean acidification have so far neglected management and related policy issues to focus instead on understanding its ecological and biogeochemical implications. This shortfall is addressed here with a systematic, international and critical review of management and policy options. In particular, we investigate the assumption that fighting acidification is mainly, but not only, about reducing CO2 emissions, and explore the leeway that this emerging problem may open in old environmental issues. We review nine types of management responses, initially grouped under four categories: preventing ocean acidification; strengthening ecosystem resilience; adapting human activities; and repairing damages. Connecting and comparing options leads to classifying them, in a qualitative way, according to their potential and feasibility. While reducing CO2 emissions is confirmed as the key action that must be taken against acidification, some of the other options appear to have the potential to buy time, e.g. by relieving the pressure of other stressors, and help marine life face unavoidable acidification. Although the existing legal basis to take action shows few gaps, policy challenges are significant: tackling them will mean succeeding in various areas of environmental management where we failed to a large extent so far.

Description: The recent increase in the rate of the Greenland ice sheet melting has raised with urgency the question of the impact of such a melting on the climate. As former model projections, based on a coarse representation of the melting, show very different sensitivity to this melting, it seems necessary to consider a multi-model ensemble to tackle this question. Here we use five coupled climate models and one ocean-only model to evaluate the impact of 0.1 Sv (1 Sv = 106 m3/s) of freshwater equally distributed around the coast of Greenland during the historical era 1965–2004. The ocean-only model helps to discriminate between oceanic and coupled responses. In this idealized framework, we find similar fingerprints in the fourth decade of hosing among the models, with a general weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Initially, the additional freshwater spreads along the main currents of the subpolar gyre. Part of the anomaly crosses the Atlantic eastward and enters into the Canary Current constituting a freshwater leakage tapping the subpolar gyre system. As a consequence, we show that the AMOC weakening is smaller if the leakage is larger. We argue that the magnitude of the freshwater leakage is related to the asymmetry between the subpolar-subtropical gyres in the control simulations, which may ultimately be a primary cause for the diversity of AMOC responses to the hosing in the multi-model ensemble. Another important fingerprint concerns a warming in the Nordic Seas in response to the re-emergence of Atlantic subsurface waters capped by the freshwater in the subpolar gyre. This subsurface heat anomaly reaches the Arctic where it emerges and induces a positive upper ocean salinity anomaly by introducing more Atlantic waters. We found similar climatic impacts in all the coupled ocean–atmosphere models with an atmospheric cooling of the North Atlantic except in the region around the Nordic Seas and a slight warming south of the equator in the Atlantic. This meridional gradient of temperature is associated with a southward shift of the tropical rains. The free surface models also show similar sea-level fingerprints notably with a comma-shape of high sea-level rise following the Canary Current.

Description: In a series of observing system simulations, we test whether the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) can be observed based on the existing Line W deep western boundary array. We simulate a Line W array, which is extended to the surface and to the east to cover the basin to the Bermuda Rise. In the analyzed ocean circulation model ORCA025, such an extended Line W array captures the main characteristics of the western boundary current. Potential trans-basin observing systems for the AMOC are tested by combining the extended Line W array with a mid-ocean transport estimate obtained from thermal wind "measurements" and Ekman transport to the total AMOC (similarly to Hirschi et al., Geophys Res Lett 30(7):1413, 2003). First, we close Line W zonally supplementing the western boundary array with several "moorings" in the basin (Line W-32A degrees N). Second, we supplement the western boundary array with a combination of observations at Bermuda and the eastern part of the RAPID array at 26A degrees N (Line W-B-RAPID). Both, a small number of density profiles across the basin and also only sampling the eastern and western boundary, capture the variability of the AMOC at Line W-32A degrees N and Line W-B-RAPID. In the analyzed model, the AMOC variability at both Line W-32A degrees N and Line W-B-RAPID is dominated by the western boundary current variability. Away from the western boundary, the mid-ocean transport (east of Bermuda) shows no significant relation between the two Line W-based sections and 26A degrees N. Hence, a Line W-based AMOC estimate could yield an estimate of the meridional transport that is independent of the 26A degrees N RAPID estimate. The model-based observing system simulations presented here provide support for the use of Line W as a cornerstone for a trans-basin AMOC observing system.

Description: The Agulhas is a convoluted and multifarious system [1]. It consists of a western boundary current, the Agulhas Current, which is arguably one of the most prominent current systems of the Southern Hemisphere (Fig.1). The Agulhas Current, roughly on par with its Northern Hemisphere counterpart, the Gulf Stream, carries vast amount of heat and salt towards the pole [2].

Description: The oceans around southern Africa form a unique system, impacting the regional and global climate [1]. From the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean vigorous interoceanic exchange of warm and saline waters takes place that is subject to a complicated interplay between local dynamics and global embedment. Central element of the circulation around South Africa is the Agulhas Current [2] that flows poleward along the east coast, closely bound to the shelf at first, and subsequently overshoots the southern tip of Africa to abruptly turn back into the Indian Ocean. Part of the warm and saline waters with tropical Indian Ocean origin, the “Agulhas leakage” [3], flows into the Atlantic and forms the surface return flow of the global thermohaline circulation towards the North Atlantic [4]. The exchange takes place in a highly nonlinear manner, with mesoscale eddies being separated from the retroflecting Agulhas Current, which then strongly interact in the Cape Basin [5]. West of the Cape Basin, large Agulhas rings that have been formed [6] transport the anomalous warm and saline waters into the South Atlantic. In addition to its own dynamics, the Agulhas Current system is influenced by nonlinearities in the source regions: mesoscale eddies originating from the Mozambique Channel and east of Madagascar [7, 8] drift southward and cause the Agulhas Current to be displaced offshore of its mean position by more than 100 km. These solitary meanders (a.k.a. “Natal Pulses”) [9] rapidly propagate downstream triggering the timing of Agulhas rings [10, 11]

Description: We investigate the dependence of surface fresh water fluxes in the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Current (NAC) area on the position of the stream axis which is not well represented in most ocean models. To correct this shortcoming, strong unrealistic surface fresh water fluxes have to be applied that lead to an incorrect salt balance of the current system. The unrealistic surface fluxes required by the oceanic component may force flux adjustments and may cause fictitious long-term variability in coupled climate models. To identify the important points in the correct representation of the salt balance of the Gulf Stream a regional model of the northwestern part of the subtropical gyre has been set up. Sensitivity studies are made where the westward flow north of the Gulf Stream and its properties are varied. Increasing westward volume transport leads to a southward migration of the Gulf Stream separation point along the American coast. The salinity of the inflow is essential for realistic surface fresh water fluxes and the water mass distribution. The subpolar-subtropical connection is important in two ways: The deep dense flow from the deep water mass formation areas sets up the cyclonic circulation cell north of the Gulf Stream. The surface and mid depth flow of fresh water collected at high northern latitudes is mixed into the Gulf Stream and compensates for the net evaporation at the surface.

Description: Series of sensitivity tests were performed with a z-coordinate, global eddy-permitting (1/4°) ocean/sea-ice model (the ORCA-R025 model configuration developed for the DRAKKAR project) to carefully evaluate the impact of recent state-of-the-art numerical schemes on model solutions. The combination of an energy–enstrophy conserving (EEN) scheme for momentum advection with a partial step (PS) representation of the bottom topography yields significant improvements in the mean circulation. Well known biases in the representation of western boundary currents, such as in the Atlantic the detachment of the Gulf Stream, the path of the North Atlantic Current, the location of the Confluence, and the strength of the Zapiola Eddy in the south Atlantic, are partly corrected. Similar improvements are found in the Pacific, Indian, and Southern Oceans, and characteristics of the mean flow are generally much closer to observations. Comparisons with other state-of-the-art models show that the ORCA-R025 configuration generally performs better at similar resolution. In addition, the model solution is often comparable to solutions obtained at 1/6 or 1/10° resolution in some aspects concerning mean flow patterns and distribution of eddy kinetic energy. Although the reasons for these improvements are not analyzed in detail in this paper, evidence is shown that the combination of EEN with PS reduces numerical noise near the bottom, which is likely to affect current–topography interactions in a systematic way. We conclude that significant corrections of the mean biases presently seen in general circulation model solutions at eddy-permitting resolution can still be expected from the development of numerical methods, which represent an alternative to increasing resolution.

Description: A central promise of cross-domain fusion (CDF) is the provision of a “bigger picture” that integrates different disciplines and may span very different levels of detail. We present a number of settings that call for this bigger picture, with a particular focus on how information from several domains can be made easily accessible and visualizable for different stakeholders. We propose harnessing an approach that is now well established in interactive maps, which we refer to as the “Google maps approach” (Google LLC, Mountain View, CA, USA), which combines effective filtering with intuitive user interaction. We expect this approach to be applicable to a range of CDF settings.