Highlight articles

Beaching patterns of plastic debris along the Indian Ocean rim

Ocean Science
DOI 10.5194/os-16-1317-2020
26 November 2020

A large percentage of global ocean plastic enters the Indian Ocean through rivers, but the fate of these plastics is generally unknown. In this paper, we use computer simulations to show that floating plastics beach and end up on coastlines throughout the Indian Ocean. Coastlines where a lot of plastic enters the ocean are heavily affected by beaching plastic, but plastics can also beach far from the source on remote islands and countries that contribute little plastic pollution of their own.

The Making of the New European Wind Atlas – Part 2: Production and evaluation

This is the second of two papers that document the creation of the New European Wind Atlas (NEWA). The paper includes a detailed description of the technical and practical aspects that went into running the mesoscale simulations and the microscale downscaling for generating the climatology. A comprehensive evaluation of each component of the NEWA model chain is presented using observations from a large set of tall masts located all over Europe.

Connecting flow–topography interactions, vorticity balance, baroclinicinstability and transport in the Southern Ocean: the case of an idealizedstorm track

Ocean Science
DOI 10.5194/os-16-1207-2020
12 November 2020

The dynamical balance of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and its implications on the functioning of the world ocean are not fully understood and poorly represented in global circulation models. In this study, the sensitivities of an idealized Southern Ocean (SO) storm track are explored with a set of eddy-rich numerical simulations. We show that the classical partition between barotropic and baroclinic modes is sensitive to current–topography interactions in the mesoscale range of 10–100 km.

Impact of horizontal resolution on global ocean–sea ice model simulationsbased on the experimental protocols of the Ocean Model IntercomparisonProject phase 2 (OMIP-2)

This paper presents global comparisons of fundamental global climate variables from a suite of four pairs of matched low- and high-resolution ocean and sea ice simulations to assess the robustness of climate-relevant improvements in ocean simulations associated with moving from coarse (∼1°) to eddy-resolving (∼0.1°) horizontal resolutions. Despite significant improvements, greatly enhanced horizontal resolution does not deliver unambiguous bias reduction in all regions for all models.

An improved mechanistic model for ammonia volatilization in Earth system models: Flow of Agricultural Nitrogen version 2 (FANv2)

Mostly emitted by the agricultural sector, ammonia has an important role in atmospheric chemistry. We developed a model to simulate how ammonia emissions respond to changes in temperature and soil moisture, and we evaluated agricultural ammonia emissions globally. The simulated emissions agree with earlier estimates over many regions, but the results highlight the variability of ammonia emissions and suggest that emissions in warm climates may be higher than previously thought.

The Ekman spiral for piecewise-uniform viscosity

Ekman’s (1905) solution for how wind affects ocean surface currents is revisited and extended analytically for a piecewise-constant profile of vertical diffusion. This allows a comprehensive understanding of how the surface current deflection angle relative to the wind direction varies with the profile of vertical diffusion.

The making of the New European Wind Atlas – Part 1: Model sensitivity

Wind energy resource assessment routinely uses numerical weather prediction model output. We describe the evaluation procedures used for picking the suitable blend of model setup and parameterizations for simulating European wind climatology with the WRF model. We assess the simulated winds against tall mast measurements using a suite of metrics, including the Earth Mover’s Distance, which diagnoses the performance of each ensemble member using the full wind speed and direction distribution.

Predicting the morphology of ice particles in deep convection using the super-droplet method:development and evaluation of SCALE-SDM 0.2.5-2.2.0, -2.2.1, and -2.2.2

Using the super-droplet method, we constructed a detailed numerical model of mixed-phase clouds based on kinetic description and subsequently demonstrated that a large-eddy simulation of a cumulonimbus which predicts ice particle morphology without assuming ice categories or mass–dimension relationships is possible. Our results strongly support the particle-based modeling methodology’s efficacy for simulating mixed-phase clouds.

HyLands 1.0: a hybrid landscape evolution model to simulate the impact of landslides and landslide-derived sediment on landscape evolution

Landslides shape the Earth’s surface and are a dominant source of terrestrial sediment. Rivers, then, act as conveyor belts evacuating landslide-produced sediment. Understanding the interaction among rivers and landslides is important to predict the Earth’s surface response to past and future environmental changes and for mitigating natural hazards. We develop HyLands, a new numerical model that provides a toolbox to explore how landslides and rivers interact over several timescales.

The shared socio-economic pathway (SSP) greenhouse gas concentrations and their extensions to 2500

This study provides the future greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations under the new set of so-called SSP scenarios (the successors of the IPCC SRES and previous representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios). The projected CO ₂ concentrations range from 350 ppm for low-emission scenarios by 2150 to more than 2000 ppm under the high-emission scenarios. We also provide concentrations, latitudinal gradients, and seasonality for most of the other 42 considered GHGs.

OS Ocean Sciences Highlight articles

Highlight articles

Beaching patterns of plastic debris along the Indian Ocean rim

The Making of the New European Wind Atlas – Part 2: Production and evaluation

Connecting flow–topography interactions, vorticity balance, baroclinicinstability and transport in the Southern Ocean: the case of an idealizedstorm track

Impact of horizontal resolution on global ocean–sea ice model simulationsbased on the experimental protocols of the Ocean Model IntercomparisonProject phase 2 (OMIP-2)

An improved mechanistic model for ammonia volatilization in Earth system models: Flow of Agricultural Nitrogen version 2 (FANv2)

The Ekman spiral for piecewise-uniform viscosity

The making of the New European Wind Atlas – Part 1: Model sensitivity

Predicting the morphology of ice particles in deep convection using the super-droplet method:development and evaluation of SCALE-SDM 0.2.5-2.2.0, -2.2.1, and -2.2.2

HyLands 1.0: a hybrid landscape evolution model to simulate the impact of landslides and landslide-derived sediment on landscape evolution

The shared socio-economic pathway (SSP) greenhouse gas concentrations and their extensions to 2500

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