Spontaneous Dansgaard-Oeschger type oscillations in climate models: Tipping Points in the climate system
Lead Supervisor: Dr Irene Malmierca Vallet
Location: British Antarctic Survey, Ice Dynamics and Palaeoclimate team
Duration: 6 weeks
Suitable undergraduate degrees: Environmental sciences, Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or related field;
- Passionate interest in data science, analysing large volumes of data
- Python knowledge highly desirable
- Excellent written and oral communications skills, as well as the ability to work as part of a project team
- Highly motivated to learn and acquire new technical skills
Project background
Timeline of abrupt events over the past 30 kyr (Brovkin et al., 2021)
The concept of Tipping Points, critical thresholds in our climate system, helps to define the current climate emergency and strengthens calls for urgent climate action. One of the most rapid climate changes observed, are the Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events. During an event, Greenland transitions from cold stadial (GS) to warmer Greenland Interstadial (GI) conditions within a few decades (Kindler et al., 2014). Surface air temperatures (SATs) over Greenland increase by 10-15°C and local snow accumulation almost doubles.
At the British Antarctic Survey, we have an ongoing model intercomparison project (SDOO: https://www.bas.ac.uk/project/sdoo/#about) to study spontaneous, DO-type oscillations in climate models. The main goal of SDOO is to cross compare existing simulations using a common set of diagnostics so we can analyse the mechanisms and the characteristics of the oscillations. In this project, the prospective student will analyse some of the SDOO model data, looking particularly at ways to test whether the system is approaching a tipping point. This is a big data problem – using TB of output from around five Earth System Model (ESM)/climate models.
The prospective student will assess model performance against several metrics: rate of Antarctic warming during GS, timing of change point in Antarctic temperature with respect to the mid-point of the Greenland transition, duration of the D-O events, amplitude of D-O events in Greenland temperature and Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITC) position.