Webinar | June 25, 2019 – h. 12:30 pm CEST

Presenter: Dorotea Iovino, CMCC Foundation – Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, ODA Division
Moderator: Enrico Scoccimarro, CMCC Foundation – Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, CSP Division

Ocean mesoscale eddies are the weather of the ocean. These swirling motions are ubiquitous in the world’s ocean and act as vehicles for the transport and mixing of heat, carbon and momentum. More than half of the kinetic energy of the ocean circulation is contained in the mesoscale eddy field, with the remainder largely contained in the large-scale circulation. Oceanic mesoscale eddies interact strongly with the atmosphere and can largely impact the sea ice evolution. While unquestionably important, a rigorous quantification of the role of mesoscale eddies in setting the climate of the Earth is still missing. How well these interactions are represented in the current generation of general circulation models remains poorly understood.

Thanks to progress in ocean modeling and the advances in high performance computing resources over the last decades, numerical ocean simulations at eddying resolution are now a realistic choice to bring new insights into the oceanic mesoscale processes and to find application in ocean forecasting. The CMCC global ocean configuration at eddying resolution  is presented.

The enhanced ocean resolution is an important consideration also when developing coupled models for climate applications. The key role played by the mesoscale dynamics in the current climate models is presented in a suite of coupled climate model simulations, participating in the High Resolution Model Intercomparison Project (HighResMIP) of the CMIP6. In particular, here we show how resolved mesoscale ocean features can affect aspects of European climate variability and improve our ability to represent the complex interplay of atmospheric/ice/ocean processes.

Agenda
12:30 pm – Welcome and introduction
12.35 pm – Presenter’s talk – Dorotea Iovino
1:05 pm – Q&A session
1:20 pm – End of webinar

Working language: English

How to partecipate
The seminar will be broadcasted via Go-to-Webinar. Please, click on the following link for registration:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/442536237443319043

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Organizer
Fondazione CMCC – Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici