The ERC Synergy project WHIRLS – an optimal testbed for fine-scale parameterizations

The new ERC Synergy project WHIRLS is about small processes having large-scale impacts. It will use a synergistic and interdisciplinary approach to study fine-scale processes across a continuum of scales (1–100 km) and assess their impacts on air-sea exchange and marine biogeochemistry and biodiversity. The focus is on the upper 1000 m in the Agulhas Current System around South Africa because it is a global hotspot of eddy activity, ocean-atmosphere heat exchange, and marine productivity and diversity. WHIRLS will perform multiple coordinated observing strategies, including a campaign in year 2026 with two research vessels and a large ensemble of autonomous platforms, to collect physical, chemical, and biological datasets across scales. These data will be supplemented by high-resolution models of the ocean and the atmosphere, developed with a focus on the Agulhas Current System, as well as the latest data science methodologies. The hierarchy of nested configurations within NEMO-AGRIF will go from the 1/4° typical CMIP resolution through 1/20° down below the km-scale (1/100°), both in ocean-only and coupled mode, and with biogeochemistry. The systematic approach of fine-scale observational and modelling methods will an optimal testbed to explore, test and develop new approaches for parameterizations of submesoscale to mesoscale processes based on artificial intelligence methodologies.