The international physical oceanographic community, lead by the US AMOC and UK RAPID research teams, has made great progress improving our understanding of modern deep-ocean overturning circulation in the Atlantic using a combination of observational and modeling approaches.

Inferences of past Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) variability and associated Earth system changes from paleoceanographic proxies have the potential to contribute considerably to the US-AMOC/UK-RAPID effort to understand AMOC, but so far there has been limited crossover and communication with the paleoceanographic community.

This workshop, to be held at the National Climate and Atmospheric Research Center (NCAR), in Boulder, Colorado, USA, aims to combine the expertise of both the modern and paleoceanographic communities to explore the state of knowledge of AMOC over a range of timescales.

Workshop objectives

Motivation for this workshop began with the recognition that instrumental records are insufficient to study the multidecadal variability of AMOC, and a strengthened collaboration between the physical oceanography and the paleoceanography communities is needed to further AMOC research.

A main goal will be to identify promising, potentially synergistic research directions to improve our understanding of AMOC and its relationship to climate variability.

Major challenges we will focus on are:

- understanding decadal to century scale variations of the AMOC
- variations on these timescales during recent millennia
- the history of AMOC changes during the Holocene
- the mechanisms driving AMOC variability and changes
- the global and regional scale AMOC impacts.

We hope to spark new research ideas across the disciplinary divide and promote new collaborations and cooperative research among participants.

Applications

The deadline for applications is 22 January 2016.

Workshop participation is limited to 60, and the organizing committee will make decisions in February.

We encourage all interested scientists to apply using this link on the main workshop website: http://usclivar.org/meetings/2016-paleo-amoc-workshop

Scientific Organizing Committee

Hali Kilbourne (Chair), University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, USA

Ian Hall, Cardiff University, UK

Patrick Heimbach, University of Texas at Austin, USA

Delia Oppo, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA

Andreas Schmittner, Oregon State University, USA

Rong Zhang, NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, USA

Contact

Hali Kilbourne
Center for Environmental Science
University of Maryland
Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, PO Box 38, Solomons, MD 20657, USA
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Website: https://usclivar.org/meetings/2016-paleo-amoc-workshop 

Further information

The meeting is supported by US CLIVAR, NSF Marine Geology and Geophysics, and PAGES. Funding for US CLIVAR is provided by NASA, NOAA, NSF and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Post-meeting material

> The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation over decades to centuries (PAGES Magazine vol.24, no.1)

> US-CLIVAR Summer 2016 Variations Newsletter vol.14(3), p.19