Sea change for weather expert
A TOOWOOMBA climatologist is about to get up close with the North Atlantic Ocean to try and figure out how ocean currents impact global weather.
Professor Joachim Ribbe from USQ’s School of Agricultural, Computational and Environmental Sciences will join the five-week international research expedition next week.
The German research vessel, Maria S. Merian, will depart from St John’s, Canada on May 24, track along the Labrador Sea toward Greenland, then continue across the Denmark Strait toward Iceland.
The survey is run by the Excellence Cluster The Future Ocean based at Germany’s University of Kiel, and contributes to the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program, a multi-institutional collaboration with experts from around the world.
Using a system of oceanwide sensor arrays, OSNAP has been studying the “engine” that drives the global oceanic circulation, monitoring the ocean’s movements across the Arctic and North Atlantic Ocean.
The program’s results will help create better models used in climate projections.
“Variations in the world’s climate, weather and seasonal patterns are forced by the longer term changes that occur in the ocean and its overall circulation,” Professor Ribbe said.
“Our sensors observe properties of the ocean, including the transport and storage of heat, as well as greenhouse gases, and how these factors control climate around the world.
“For example, a well-known driver of Australia’s weather and climate variability is the El Nino Southern Oscillation – a system which also depends on the climatic state of the ocean that is driven by the northern hemisphere’s North Atlantic.”
While aboard the ship Professor Ribbe and other scientists will take shifts in monitoring results from deep-water probes that collect samples from the surface to the ocean floor, some 4000 metres below.
“These measurements will give us data on ocean current strength, temperature, salinity and chemical composition of sea water,” he said.