PC33A:
Meridional Overturning Circulation Dynamics in Past Warm and Cold Climates II


Session ID#: 36863

Session Description:
The meridional overturning circulation (MOC) is a key component of the global climate system, as it modulates the transport and storage of both heat and carbon. Changes in deep-ocean circulation are thought to have played a key role in past climatic transitions, such as between glacial and interglacial periods. However, reaching a quantitative understanding of the dynamics that contributed to these changes, remains a major challenge in climate research. The MOC’s response to current climate trends is also an unknown when assessing future global ocean-climate-carbon cycle interactions. Investigating how the MOC varied in the past can provide crucial information on the mechanisms and drivers of its variability, as well as on the possible impacts of future circulation changes. This multidisciplinary session will facilitate discussions between the modeling and data communities, with the aim to explore both the transient and equilibrium response of the MOC to different forcing scenarios. We welcome contributions from both proxy-based studies to reconstruct past changes, and those exploring these dynamics from a mechanistic perspective, spanning from theoretical approaches to fully-coupled numerical modeling efforts. We especially encourage combined model-data analyses, as well as studies investigating past periods that could be viewed as analogues for future climates.
Primary Chair:  Alice Marzocchi, University of Chicago, Geophysical Sciences, Chicago, IL, United States
Co-chairs:  Benoit Thibodeau, The University of Hong Kong, Earth Sciences and SWIMS, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Juan Muglia, Oregon State University, College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Corvallis, OR, United States and Andrea Burke, University of St Andrews, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, St Andrews, United Kingdom
Moderators:  Benoit Thibodeau, The University of Hong Kong, Earth Sciences and SWIMS, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Andrea Burke, University of St Andrews, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, St Andrews, United Kingdom, Juan Muglia, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), CESIMAR, Puerto Madryn, Argentina and Alice Marzocchi, The Challenger Society for Marine Science, Geophysical Sciences, Southampton, United Kingdom
Student Paper Review Liaisons:  Benoit Thibodeau, The University of Hong Kong, Earth Sciences and SWIMS, Hong Kong, Hong Kong and Alice Marzocchi, The Challenger Society for Marine Science, Geophysical Sciences, Southampton, United Kingdom
Index Terms:

1616 Climate variability [GLOBAL CHANGE]
4255 Numerical modeling [OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL]
4532 General circulation [OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL]
4962 Thermohaline [PALEOCEANOGRAPHY]
Cross-Topics:
  • BN - Biogeochemistry and Nutrients
  • HE - High Latitude Environments
  • OM - Ocean Modeling
  • PL - Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger

Abstracts Submitted to this Session:

Heather L Ford, University of Cambridge, Earth Sciences, Cambridge, United Kingdom, Natalie Burls, George Mason University, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, Fairfax, VA, United States and David A Hodell, University of Cambridge, Godwin Laboratory for Palaeoclimate Research, Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Natalie Burls, George Mason University, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, Fairfax, VA, United States, Alexey V Fedorov, Yale University, New Haven, United States, Daniel Mikhail Sigman, Princeton University, Geosciences, Princeton, United States, Sam Jaccard, University of Bern, Institute of Geological Sciences & Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research, Bern, Switzerland, Heather L Ford, University of Cambridge, Earth Sciences, Cambridge, United Kingdom, Ralf Tiedemann, AWI Bremerhaven, Bremerhaven, Germany and Gerald Hermann Haug, ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany
Andy Ridgwell, University of California, Riverside, Department of Earth Sciences, Riverside, United States and Sandra Kirtland Turner, University of California Riverside, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Riverside, United States
Ruza F Ivanovic, University of Leeds, School of Earth and Environment, Leeds, LS2, United Kingdom, Paul J Valdes, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom, Lauren J Gregoire, University of Leeds, School of Earth and Environment, Leeds, United Kingdom and Andrew D Wickert, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Minneapolis, MN, United States
Jiaxu Zhang, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States; University of Washington Seattle Campus, Seattle, United States, Zhengyu Liu, Ohio State University Main Campus, Columbus, OH, United States; The Ohio State University, Department of Geography, Columbus, United States, Esther C Brady, NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, United States, Delia Oppo, WHOI, Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole, United States; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, United States, Peter U Clark, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, United States, Alexandra Jahn, University of Colorado at Boulder, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and INSTAAR, Boulder, United States, Shaun A Marcott, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States and Keith T Lindsay, NCAR, CGD, Boulder, United States
Wei Liu, University of California Riverside, Riverside, CA, United States
Aixue Hu1, Bette L Otto-Bliesner1, Justin Small2, Carrie Morrill3, Cecilia M Bitz4 and Nan A Rosenbloom5, (1)NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, United States, (2)National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States, (3)NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Boulder, United States, (4)University of Washington, Department of Atmospheric and Climate Science, Seattle, United States, (5)National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, United States
Casey Saenger, Univ of Washington-JISAO, Seattle, WA, United States, Michael N Evans, University of Maryland College Park, Dept of Geology and Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, College Park, United States, Allegra N LeGrande, Columbia University, NASA/GISS, New York, United States, Stephanie C Pennington, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Joint Global Change Research Institute, College Park, United States, Julia Claire Tindall, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom, Martin Werner, Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany and Kaustubh Thirumalai, Brown University, Providence, RI, United States