This joint proposal to U.S. National Science Foundation's Directorate for Geosciences and U.K. Natural Environment Research Council aims to investigate how the Oyashio Extension frontal variability in the Northwest Pacific Ocean influences the large-scale atmospheric circulation by accumulating the interaction between the individual weather system and underlying ocean front. The atmospheric storm track exhibits the local maximum strength in the Northwest Pacific over the strong ocean fronts driven by collocated maximum baroclinicity, which is in turn maintained by huge heat and moisture supplied by the ocean. While significant advances have been achieved in the past decade or so on our understanding of ocean front's impact on the atmosphere for the mean climate, there are still many crucial questions yet to be answered, especially related to impact of ocean frontal variability on the atmospheric circulation variability. A particular goal of this proposal is to unveil the link between the local air-sea interaction in weather scale near the Oyashio Extension and its cumulative impact on the large-scale atmospheric circulation and climate variability. Specific emphases will be placed on the seasonality of this link by contrasting the early and late winter, and also the asymmetry/nonlinearity in the large-scale atmospheric response to warm and cold SST anomalies induced by a shift of the Oyashio Extension front to the north and south, respectively. These challenging goals will be addressed by combining analyses of observational and reanalysis datasets and targeted climate model experiments using the Variable Resolution Community Atmosphere Model v.6 with Spectral Element dynamical-core, a state-of-the art atmospheric general circulation model, which will be configured with a very high-resolution over the North Pacific and lower resolution elsewhere globally to realistically simulate the frontal air-sea interaction over the Oyashio Extension as well as the feedback with the large-scale circulation at a manageable computational cost. Furthermore, the role of local ocean coupling will be investigated by comparing the atmosphere-only simulations with those coupled to the 1-dimensional column ocean model.

Almost all active caldera volcanoes host hydrothermal systems that circulate a mixture of seawater, meteoric water and magmatic fluids through the subsurface geology to seeps or vents on the seafloor. These fluids can explosively interact with magma in volcanic eruptions and can change the physical properties of their host rocks, influencing both the likelihood of eruptions occurring and their explosivity. The nature of these interactions is poorly understood, including how fluid flow changes during periods of magmatic intrusion, how the hydrothermal system connects magmatic fluids to the surface and the spatial distribution and extent of alteration/mineralisation. While we know hydrothermal fluid flow plays an important role in modulating eruption dynamics, as long as these fundamental knowledge gaps exist it is impossible to forecast, with any degree of accuracy, what this effect will be which makes understanding hazards and impacts in eruption scenarios difficult. In this proposal we will combine novel controlled source electromagnetic mapping of porosity and permeability, with passive seismic mapping of hydrothermal fluid flow in the shallow subsurface, constrained by heat flow measurements and surface and subsurface sampling to characterise the porosity and permeability of the Santorini hydrothermal system. Santorini has been selected as the ideal natural laboratory to test these relationships because it is exceptionally well characterised geophysically and geologically, has a diversity of hydrothermal vents and has experienced recent activity which can be used to test modelling. We will quantify how magmatic fluids are partitioned between vents to identify the primary pathways for magmatic volatile escape, and quantify the impact hydrothermal mineralisation has had on the physical strength of the seafloor. Once we have a full picture of the system in its current state we will use mapping, fluid inclusions, mineralogy and the sedimentary record to establish how vent locations, subsurface fluid pathways, and fluid fluxes, temperatures and chemistries responded to the 2011/12 period of unrest. These data will be used to constrain the boundary conditions for a hydrothermal system model, which can be used to predict how the system will respond to future periods of intrusion both at Santorini and at other caldera systems around the world. This project will provide a step change in our understanding of hydrothermal interactions with volcanoes and our ability to predict their response to changes in the magmatic system. This has implications not just for understanding volcanic eruptions, but also for understanding metal and volatile fluxes from the mantle to the ocean and atmosphere, the development of economic metal deposits in these systems, the impact on ecological communities of intrusive and extrusive volcanic events, geothermal energy production, and for hazard forecasting and mitigation. The project will push the frontiers of knowledge by combining cutting edge geophysical and geochemical techniques to produce a model of a caldera hydrothermal system at a resolution previously not possible, and by developing modelling tools that would allow the application of these findings to other systems. The project is ambitious but achievable and benefits from a large team of international expert proponents, partnerships with other large international projects and high-quality pre-existing data upon which to build.

To date, studies that have addressed the impacts of global changes have mainly focused on linking climate variability and/or human disturbances to individual life history traits, population dynamics or distribution. However, individual behavior and plasticity mediate these responses. The goal of this project is to understand mechanisms linking environmental changes (climate & fisheries) - behavioral personality type - plasticity in foraging behaviors - life history traits - population dynamics for a seabird breeding in the southern ocean: the wandering albatross. This project will also forecast the population structure and growth rate using the most detailed mechanistic model to date for any wild species incorporating behaviors in an eco-evolutionary context. Specifically, the investigators will (1) characterize the life history strategies along the shy-bold continuum of personalities and across environmental conditions; (2) understand the link between phenotypic plasticity in foraging effort and personality; (3) characterize the heritability of personality and foraging behaviors; (4) develop a stochastic eco-evolutionary model to understand and forecast the distribution of bold and shy individuals within the population and the resulting effect on population growth rate in a changing environment by integrating processes from goals 1, 2 and 3. To date, this has been hampered by the lack of long-term data on personality and life histories in any long-lived species in the wild. For the first time ever, we have tested in a controlled environment the response to a novel situation for ~1800 individuals for more than a decade to define individual personality variation along the shy-bold continuum that we can relate to the life history traits over the entire species life cycle using unique long-term individual mark-recapture data sets for this iconic polar species. The novelty of this project thus lies in the combination of personality, foraging and demographic data to understand and forecast population responses to global change using state-of-the-art statistical analysis and eco-evolutionary modeling approaches.

The surface ocean is home to billions of microscopic plants called phytoplankton which produce organic matter in the surface ocean using sunlight and carbon dioxide. When they die they sink, taking this carbon into the deep ocean, where it is stored on timescales of hundreds to thousands of years, which helps keep our climate the way it is today. The size of the effect they have on our climate is linked to how deep they sink before they dissolve - the deeper they sink, the more carbon is stored. This sinking carbon also provides food to the animals living in the ocean's deep, dark 'twilight zone'. Computer models can help us predict how future changes in greenhouse gas emissions might change this ocean carbon store. Current models however struggle with making these predictions. This is partly because until recently we haven't even been able to answer the basic question 'Is there enough food for all the animals living in the twilight zone?'. But in a breakthrough this year we used new technology and new theory to show that there is indeed enough food. So now we can move on to asking what controls how deep the carbon sinks. There are lots of factors which might affect how deep the material sinks but at the moment we can't be sure which ones are important. In this project we will make oceanographic expeditions to two different places to test how these different factors affect carbon storage in the deep ocean. We will measure the carbon sinking into the twilight zone and the biological processes going on within it. Then we will determine if the systems are balanced - in other words, what goes in, should come out again. We will then write equations linking all the parts of the system together and analyse them to make them more simple. At the same time we will test whether the simple equations are still useful by seeing if they produce good global maps of ocean properties for which we have lots of data. Finally, when we are happy that our new equations are doing a good job we will use them in a computer model to predict the future store of carbon in the ocean.

Over the past decade the Greenland ice sheet has thinned at an accelerating rate and is currently the largest single contributor to global sea-level rise. Understanding the likely rate and magnitude of future change matters because accurate projections of sea-level rise are necessary if governments are to plan for the future in a warming world and develop sustainable coastal defence strategies. A significant portion of Greenland's contribution to sea-level rise has been associated with the speed-up and melting of an increased number of fast-flowing outlet glaciers. Rapid thinning of these glaciers has coincided with increases in air and ocean temperatures, suggesting that they are sensitive and responsive to these parameters. However, although various mechanisms related to atmospheric and oceanic forcing have been proposed to explain the recent thinning, there exist large uncertainties in the relative importance of and interplay between each of these and the ice sheet response to them over longer timescales. Without this crucial information output from the current generation of ice sheet models has limitations and there is potential for significant errors in sea-level rise projections. This research will directly address this critical gap in our understanding by reconstructing the past behaviour of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS) over the past 10,000 years. NEGIS is of particular interest because recent studies show that this cold, High Arctic region of the ice sheet has started to undergo sustained thinning after more than 25 years of relative stability. This has raised concerns that rapid inland retreat is already underway and could lead to drawdown of the NEGIS catchment. Complete collapse of its drainage basin would raise sea-level by ~1.4 m (equivalent to the combined Pine Island-Thwaites catchment in Antarctica) posing a major hazard for coastal populations. NEGIS provides an unparalleled opportunity to investigate the response of an ice stream to past change (oceanic and atmospheric warming), because there is evidence that it underwent dramatic retreat (and then advance) during the Holocene Thermal Maximum (a period of increased air temperatures analogous to that predicted for late 21st century). To achieve this we have assembled an experienced team who will generate a detailed record of changes in NEGIS geometry, and the contemporaneous atmospheric, oceanic and relative sea level changes. We will reconstruct ice stream configuration (thickness, extent) from marine and terrestrial data, and produce high-resolution records of oceanic and atmospheric temperatures and relative sea level. Using a state-of-the-art ice sheet model (BISICLES), these data will be used to test the sensitivity of the ice stream to different forcing mechanisms at 100-1000 year timescales. Our chosen timescale will allow us to differentiate short term 'noise' from long term trends, something that has been recognised as a potential issue, which is not possible from investigations of contemporary margin fluctuations derived from a few decades of instrumental records. Ultimately our project will deliver significant improvements in our understanding of the sensitivity of the ice sheet to various forcing mechanisms that will help to underpin sea-level rise projections, shape policy on coastal defence and protect future generations. The project has significant added value in that we will work within a funded European programme 'Greenland Ice Sheet/Ocean Interaction and Fram Strait Fluxes' and has confirmed funded logistical support through the Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany and a 50 day cruise on the RV Polarstern (2016) to this remote area.