Have you ever wondered how much a single measurement campaign matters when estimating the ocean's carbon sink? In a study published recently in Scientific Reports, Jaqueline Behncke and Peter Landschützer from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology together with Toste Tanhua from GEOMAR show that data from a single sailboat have a significant impact on estimates of the ocean carbon sink. In the South Polar Ocean, where few measurement campaigns take place, CO2 measurements from a single…
When a snowball Earth deglaciates, the planet transitions rapidly into a hot "supergreenhouse" climate that persists for a hundred thousand years or more - according to the classic snowball Earth theory. In a new publication, MPI-M scientists Lennart Ramme, Tatiana Ilyina and Jochem Marotzke show that this concept is too simplified, as the ocean transformations after a snowball Earth drive strong carbon cycle dynamics, which alter the evolution of atmospheric CO2. In fact, scenarios ranging…
Do climate models realistically represent the coupling between Earth’s surface warming and the top-of-the atmosphere radiation? Dirk Olonscheck, research scientist at Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, and Maria Rugenstein, Assistant Professor at Colorado State University, show that models systematically underestimate the observed coupling strength. Thereby, the models accumulate too much energy in the atmosphere, an effect that contributes to a possibly too high climate sensitivity of some…
In their new study Olga Erokhina and Uwe Mikolajewicz showed that adding icebergs to climate models can help scientists better understand the influence melting icebergs have on the planet’s climate. Even though icebergs are an important component of the climate system, they are not included in most models — partly as they are computational quite expensive. Erokhina und Mikolajewicz now found a new approach of including them that doesn't add much to the computational cost of running the climate…
In a recent study, Dr. Junhong Lee and Dr. Cathy Hohenegger show that a next-generation climate model exhibits a different relationship between water stored in the soil and precipitation compared to a state-of-the-art climate model. This finding questions the ability of conventional climate models to answer questions related to climate over land.
In a recent publication, Prof. Jin-Song von Storch together with other scientists showed that the ocean component of the ICON model is able to realistically simulate the major properties of open-ocean tides, also known as barotropic tides or surface tides. This ability is a prerequisite for the ocean component of ICON at kilometer scale to realistically simulate internal tides, which “live” in the ocean interior and are challenging to observe. Internal tides represent a major internal wave…
A group of climate protection fellows from South America, Asia and Africa will be visiting the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) and the German Climate Computing Center on March 20 to gain an overview of selected aspects of climate research.
Climate change is melting the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica and causing sea levels to rise. This could be a disaster for
island states and coastal cities. How much the ice sheets shrink also depends on feedback effects between the ice sheets and the climate system. Marie-Luise Kapsch and Clemens Schannwell are studying these effects at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.
In a commentary recently published in AGU Advances, Prof. Bjorn Stevens, Director of the Climate Physics Department of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, shares his perspectives on the future of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, or CMIP.
In a new study, Lara Wallberg, together with Laura Suarez-Gutierrez, Daniela Matei, and Wolfgang Müller have investigated the relationship between extremely warm European summers and changes in the North Atlantic Ocean. They found a mechanism through which extremely warm European summers are preceded by the accumulation of heat in the North Atlantic Ocean on sub-decadal time scales of five to ten years. Thereby, anomalies of the ocean heat transport and associated ocean heat content changes…
From March 4 to 8, the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology will be hosting a hackathon for intensive hacking, bug-finding, bug-fixing and lots of fun. The hackathon on the topic of Earth system modelling is being jointly organized by three projects, making it even bigger than its predecessors that have taken place in recent years. Around 140 registered participants from Europe and Senegal will let their fingers fly in Hamburg.