Sarah Fawcett, Associate Professor and biogeochemical oceanographer at the University of Cape Town (UCT) has received 2.3 million euros in funding to research the Agulhas Current System around South Africa, considered the world’s most energetic region.
She is part of an international research team, from Germany, France and Sweden, that has received almost 12 million euros in funding over six years from the European Research Council (ERC) to better understand the ocean’s role in ongoing and future climate change.
“The Agulhas system is not only unique in terms of its vigorous circulation, intense air-sea heat and carbon uptake and the particularly high productivity and diversity of its marine ecosystem,” Sarah said. “It also plays a key role in the global ocean circulation and strongly influences regional and global climate.”
Heat and carbon are the primary factors influencing regional and global climate. The ocean absorbs huge amounts of heat, limiting the effects of global warming. When the ocean releases heat to the atmosphere, the climate becomes warmer and wetter, and vice versa.
Carbon that enters the ocean is distributed by ocean currents and taken up by phytoplankton. These tiny plants form the base of the marine food web and are key to marine biodiversity. Additionally, carbon stored in the ocean is removed from the atmosphere for hundreds of years, which also helps to mitigate climate change.
“WHIRLS is basically about fine-scale processes having large-scale impacts”, said Professor Arne Biastoch, ocean modeller at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany, and coordinator of the project. “Whirls refer to processes on scales of less than 100 kilometres. This might still sound large, but such patterns are small in the context of the global ocean, and are currently poorly resolved in ocean observations and climate models.”
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