Abstract:

The oceans are the dominant reservoir of excess energy in the earth system.  The processes underlying how energy arrives in the oceans, the geophysical fluid dynamics of where it ends up, and the consequences of an expanding and increasingly massive ocean on sea level, are at the forefront of many aspects of oceanography and climate science.  I will contrast traditional methods of understanding processes in the ocean and air-sea-ice boundary and their impacts through parameterizations versus new approaches using machine learning and emulators.  Overall, I’ll present a description of what is important in oceanic climate change, how it can be modeled or parameterized, and how aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties are quantified and managed.