MakingWaves: Wave-mediated atmosphere-ocean-sea-ice interactions and their climatic impacts in the Nordic Seas and eastern Arctic.

Wind generated ocean surface waves are the waves we can see breaking on the beach or those waves that make us sea-sick when traveling in a boat. They are always present on the surface of the ocean. These waves have periods from seconds to a couple a minutes with wavelengths from centimeters up to approx. 500 meters. Their height can be from centimeters up to 15 meters or more. These waves are on the interface between ocean and atmosphere and affect the fluxes of momentum and energy, heat mass and radiation. Observations have also shown intense interaction between waves and sea ice. Because of the scales of the waves it was thought that their influence was felt only locally and that their effects on ocean and atmosphere could be well described as a function of wind speed only. This simplified view has been questioned recently since some of the waves do not travel in the same direction as the wind (named swell). In this project we have included active (in contrast with parametrizations) ocean surface waves in a climate model: Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM) to study their influence in the climate. We will analyze first the interactions of each component (atmosphere, ocean and sea-ice) with the waves before using all the interactions at the same time. As preliminary results we have found that including a mutual interaction between the waves and the atmosphere (coupling wave-atmosphere) improves the storm's localization which increases the amount of oceanic heat taken up by the atmosphere and as a result more atmospheric heat is sent to the Arctic. We have also found that the mutual interaction between the waves and the ocean (coupling wave-ocean) mainly deepens the ocean mixed layer depth via the so-called Langmuir circulation.