Ocean Circulation and Transport between the North Atlantic and Arctic Sea --- status report 2005

The Norwegian OCTAS Project running from 2003 to 2006 focuses on the ocean circulation in the Fram Strait and adjacent sea with the main objective to improve sea surface topography determination and to study the impact on ocen modelling. The overall aim of this proposal is to enhance Norwegian capacity in Earth observation (EO) technologies in a coordinated way by promoting and developing methods for the joint exploitation of current missions like CHAMP, GRACE, and JASON and the approved European Space Agency ENVISAT (Radar Altimeter) and GOCE missions for ocean circulation studies and associated climate modelling and operational data assimilation. A central quantity for studying and understanding the ocean circulation is the mean dynamic topography (MDT), which is the difference between the mean sea surface (MSS) and the geoid. The MDT provides the absolute reference surface for the ocean circulation and is, in particular, expected to improve the determination of the mean ocean circulation. This, in turn, will advance the understanding of the role of the ocean mass and heat transport in climate change.