Information for RAPID Stakeholders:


	Information for RAPID Stakeholders: An overview of RAPID

RAPID The NERC directed programme for rapid climate change research General Interest Will global warming plunge the UK into a big freeze? Information for RAPID Stakeholders Policy makers, government agencies and industry Welcome Page Information for Stakeholders Science Overiew RAPID Science Overview *New: Briefing on August 2007 Science* papers Historical abrupt climate change** Stakeholder News RAPID Stakeholder News	RAPID is a six-year directed programme of the UK Natural Environment Research Council. The programme commenced in 2001, to improve our ability to quantify the probability and magnitude of future rapid climate change affecting the UK. To achieve our goals RAPID funds a large number of research projects hosted by universities and government institutions. The focus of most RAPID research concerns the state of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation and in particular the component of the circulation known as the 'thermohaline circulation'. This phenomenon is driven by cold, salty water sinking in sub-Arctic waters and sustains the transport of huge amounts of heat into the North Atlantic and beyond. This heat is in turn released to the atmosphere and helps to moderate the climate of the UK and much of northwestern Europe. Changes to the temperature and saltiness of the North Atlantic associated with global warming may upset the thermohaline circulation and could be a principal source of future rapid climate change. We need to know with certainty how likely this is and what the implications might be for the UK. A small number of projects do consider other sources of rapid climate change, such as modification to the behaviour of the El-Nino phenomenon. One of our largest projects has installed a number of moored instruments within the Atlantic Ocean designed to monitor the large-scale circulation. From these instruments we will obtain a four year time series of observations which will help us to identify how the Atlantic Ocean circulation is changing. This is an important and topical issue. Recent RAPID-funded analysis of ship-based observations suggests a sizeable slowdown of the circulation is underway. We need more observations to understand why these changes are happening and what the implications for the climate could be. Other projects are making extensive use of today's generation of computer climate models, attempting to understand why forecasts of future ocean circulation, as the planet continues to warm, disagree. Most models do agree some weakening of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation is likely, but the size and reason for these changes vary. By combining actual observations with clues gleaned from comparing different climate models we can learn much more about the behaviour of the Atlantic circulation in the present and future climate. RAPID is also funding research into the development of powerful statistical tools that enable us to perform experiments that would conventionally require us to run expensive climate models many times. Having the ability to do this allows us to 'tweak' a variety of model settings and assess the impact on the ocean circulation. Once developed these tools can also be used to address similar 'sensitivity' problems in other branches of climate science.	Science Snapshots Defining rapid climate change MORE NEW: Historical abrupt climate change MORE The Atlantic Ocean circulation MORE Monitoring the Atlantic Ocean MORE
	Last modified: August 16 2007 16:38