Call for Abstracts
Session OS 03: Accelerating Changes in Freshwater and Heat Contents of
the Oceans: Footprint, Evolution, and Role in Climate and Human Life
American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2006 Fall Meeting
11-15 December 2006
San Francisco, California
Abstract Submission Deadlines:
Friday, 1 September 2006 (mail)
Thursday, 7 September 2006 (online)
For further information, please go to:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm06/?content=search&show=detail&sessid=46
You are invited to submit an abstract to the following session at this
year's American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting:
Session OS 03: Accelerating Changes in Freshwater and Heat Contents of
the Oceans: Footprint, Evolution, and Role in Climate and Human Life
Session Description:
Numerous studies conducted over the past two decades reveal substantial
changes of regional and global seawater properties, including
climatologically and biologically active substances (gases, nutrients,
etc). Many, if not most, of those changes arrive from just a few
localized sources (e.g., the Labrador and Nordic Seas in the North
Atlantic), being formed and shaped by similar physical processes (e.g.,
deep convection, entrainment). Understanding the links of those
processes with the changing freshwater and heat contents is necessary to
deepen our comprehension of the Earth's climate system, and ultimately
to improve skills of predicting the climate and potential impacts of its
changes on the socio-economic aspects of life.
The scope of this session lies in the origins and consequences of
variability of freshwater and heat contents in the oceans and the role
such variability plays in climate change and dynamics (circulation, sea
level, marine environment, etc.) as seen from observations and models. A
vigorous discussion of the appearance, causes, and driving mechanisms of
the observed and simulated signals, their pathways and dynamics,
temporal and spatial evolution, amplification, and dissipation is
anticipated.
One of the key topics brought to the session deals with a seeming
conflict between the sustained freshening of the deep layers of the
North Atlantic Ocean and the reported slowdown of the ocean's
overturning circulation. If this freshening led to circulation slowdown,
would the weaker transport of North Atlantic Deep Water result in an
inversion of the freshening trend and rapid salinity increase in the
deep and abyssal waters?
The session will help to mediate two different viewpoints--one of which
regards ocean change as a distant future challenge, while the other
warns that some prominent changes in surface salinity are likely to
cause a dangerous climatic shift, altering the global budgets exchanges
of freshwater and heat. Papers that address socio-economic aspects of
climate change caused by changing freshwater and heat balance and
subsequent potential climate change are also invited.
Conveners:
Igor Yashayaev
Bedford Institute of Oceanography
E-mail: yashayaevi [at] mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca
Dan Seidov
EMS Earth and Environmental Systems Institute
Pennsylvania State University
E-mail: dseidov [at] psu.edu
Michael Karcher
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research
E-mail: mkarcher [at] awi-bremerhaven.de
Igor Polyakov
International Arctic Research Center
University of Alaska
E-mail: igor [at] iarc.uaf.edu
Craig M. Lee
Applied Physics Laboratory
University of Washington
E-mail: craig [at] apl.washington.edu