Task Team 4: Climate Sensitivity to AMOC: Climate/Ecosystem Impacts
The task team is charged with better understanding the links between the AMOC and North Atlantic SST and teleconnections with climate variability elsewhere.
View TT4 Near- and Long-Term Priorities
| Member name | Institution |
|---|---|
| Chris Little, Chair | AER Inc. |
| Nick Bates | Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences |
| Martha Buckley | George Mason University |
| Claudia Cenedese | Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution |
| Ping Chang | Texas A&M University |
| Ke Chen | Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution |
| Amy Clement | University of Miami |
| Marlos Goes | NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Metiorological Laboratory |
| Taka Ito | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Terry Joyce | Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution |
| Kathryn Kelly | University of Washington |
| Sergey Kravtsov | University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee |
| Yochanan Kushnir | Columbia University |
| Zhengyu Liu | University of Wisconsin |
| Dimitris Menemenlis | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
| Anastasia Romanou | Columbia University/NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies |
| Andreas Schmittner | Oregon State University |
| Fiamma Straneo | Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution |
| Mingfang Ting | Columbia University |
| Anastasios Tsonis | University of Wisconsin |
| Denis Volkov | University of Miami/NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Metreorological Laboratory |
| Jiayan Yang | Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution |
| Jianjun Yin | University of Arizona |
| Rong Zhang | NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab |
| Jian Zhao | University of Maryland Center for Environment Science |
Near-term priorities
Relationship between AMOC, the ITCZ, and the hydrological cycle
Modeling experiments seem to clearly suggest an impact between imposed changes in the AMOC and shifts in the ITCZ. However, ITCZ shifts in coupled models appear to be damped in contrast to slab models. The impact of internal variability of the AMOC on the ITCZ is more uncertain, but there are interesting recent results, including high predictability of shifts in the ITCZ position (Martin and Thorncroft 2015), which seem to be related to changes in the AMOC in the subpolar North Atlantic. However, several key questions remain unaddressed, including:
- What is the impact of model biases on the ability to capture AMOC variability and teleconnections?
- What are the interactions between the AMOC, AMV, and changes in different types of clouds?
Relationship between the AMOC and global and regional sea level
- Does the AMOC and resulting ocean heat transport have a significant impact on regional sea level? How does it compare to other factors (e.g., local winds, changes in the Gulf Stream path)?
- Can sea level be used as a proxy for the AMOC?
Relationship between the AMOC and the cryosphere
- What are the mechanisms for warming along the ice shelf in Greenland? Related to the AMOC? Local winds?
- What is the impact of the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet on the AMOC (e.g., Oceans Melting Greenland project)?
Relationship between the AMOC and climate extremes
- What is the impact of the AMOC on hurricanes?
- What is the impact of the AMOC on droughts?
- How can the CMIP6 decadal MIPs be used to understand AMOC variability and related climate impacts?
Relationship between the AMOC, the carbon cycle, and marine ecosystems
- How does the AMOC impact the carbon cycle?
- What is the impact of the AMOC/AMV on fisheries?
Long-term priority
- Understand how AMOC variability interacts with other components of the Earth system – its climate, hydrologic cycle, atmospheric circulation, coupled phenomena (e.g., ENSO, monsoons), other ocean basins (e.g., Southern Ocean), cryosphere, sea level, marine and terrestrial ecosystems, biogeochemical cycles, and carbon budgets.