OCMIP-3 includes three new funded activities:

• NOCES (Northern Ocean Carbon Exchange Study), an EC project led by J. Orr at LSCE-IPSL (France)
• Inverse basis functions: constraining the air-sea exchange of natural and anthropogenic CO2 by inverse modeling, a NASA project led by N. Gruber (UCLA, USA)
• AutoMOD (Automated Model Ocean Diagnostic Facility), a NASA and DOE project led by K. Caldeira at (LLNL, USA)

NOCES:

1. to assess interannual-decadal variability of air-sea CO2 flux (ocean model-data comparison),
2. to evaluate prognostic coupled carbon-climate models (w.r.t. interannual variability), and
3. to improve constraints on the terrestrial carbon sink (ocean model sea-air CO2 fluxes as a priori estimates for inverse atmospheric models).

• it being the first ocean model Intercomparison to focus on interannual-decadal variability (1 regional and 5 global ocean models);
• it being the first to simulate decadal variability (NCEP 1950-present) and focus on associated mechanisms; and
• its inclusion of an inverse atmospheric modeling component.

Participants:

The European members of NOCES include IPSL-France (Orr, Yiou, Aumont, Dutay, Monfray, Metzl), Hadley-UK (S. Spall), MPI-BGC-Germany (C. Le Quere, MPIM-Germany (E. Maier-Reimer), IfM-Kiel-Germany (A. Oschlies), U.Liege and U. Louvain-Belgium (A. Mouchet, E. Deleersnyder), NERSC-Norway (H. Drange), UEA-UK(N. Lefevre, A. Watson), SAHFOS-UK (P. Reid). Other non-European groups have also expressed interest in participating, including LLNL(K. Caldeira), MIT (M. Follows), UCLA (N. Gruber), and U. Wisconsin (A. Winguth), and Japanese (Y. Yamanaka) modelers.

INVERSE BASIS FUNCTIONS:

The inverse ocean modeling project led by N. Gruber (UCLA, USA) builds on a recently developed Green.s function method that uses interior ocean observations of dissolved inorganic carbon together with models in order to determine the air-sea exchange of anthropogenic and pre-industrial carbon (Gloor et al., 2002).

This recently funded project has three objectives:

1. to assess and quantify the robustness and uncertainties of this ocean inverse method by using Green.s functions from five U.S. OGCMs (NCAR, LLNL, MIT, Princeton and ECCO) and two international OGCMs (LSCE: France, CSIRO, Australia),
2. to continue the development of the inversion method by incorporating additional observations, such as surface ocean pCO2, windspeed, and atmospheric CO2 as contraints, and
3. to improve the understanding of the mechanisms controlling the air-sea CO2 fluxes by testing and optimizing gas exchange parameterizations.

AUTOMOD:

The AutoMOD project will provide a community service by developing an Automated Model Diagnostic facility for ocean model ouput. The goal is to provide the community with an automated overview of model performance free of charge through an easy-to-use interface.. This will in turn allow scientists to spend less time on routine analysis and more time on reflecting how to improve models. Models will be compared to datasets such as those used during OCMIP-2 and to NASA.s satellite data products. This automated analysis system will evolve to incorporate new standards in model-model and model-data comparison. In cooperation with NOCES, an early emphasis of AutoMOD will be automating evaluation of modeled seasonal, interannual, and decadal variability.