Oceanic heat flux in the eastern Nordic Seas

Principal Investigator - Eystein Jansen (UNIB)
Partners: Carin Andersson (UNIB), Nalan Koc (NP), Trond Dokken (UNIS)

1) Oceanic heat flux during the LGM.
The aim here is to provide a new data set for SSTs for the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). This will provide an alternative data set to the CLIMAP data set to be used as initialisation fields for modelling the LGM, which is closer to the current findings of the state of the ocean at the LGM.

2) Amplitude and variability of Oceanic heat flux in the Eastern Nordic Seas during the last 2 ka.
The aim here is to provide data sets with decadal scale resolution documenting the SST variability along the NW European margin during the last 2 ka. This will assess the variability of heat flux on longer time scales covering both the instrumental period and the preceding 2 ka, allowing for assessments of the stability of the modern variability as compared to that which has existed over the past 2 ka.

3) Amplitude and variability of Oceanic heat flux in the during the Holocene optimum and glacial conditions.
The aim here is to compare the SST variability of 'modern' forcing conditions to those of the Holocene optimum with stronger summer insolation than today, and the variability during glacial conditions. This will address how the heat flux changed as a response to different forcing regimes and how the variability changed both in amplitude and possibly in the stationarity of the variations, Thereby we aim to answer the questions if past variability is fundamentally the same as the modern, with only changing amplitudes, or whether the time scales of the variations have also changed.