DFG

Collaborative Research Center TRR 181 ”Energy transfers in Atmosphere and Ocean“

Combined effort for consistent ocean and atmosphere models.

View all participating institutions

Interdisciplinary research for a common goal

Joint work of oceanographers, meteorologists and mathematicians.

Explore research areas

Strengthens northern German Collaboration

Participation of scientists from Hamburg, Bremen and Rostock.

Learn more about the partners

Welcome to the Collaborative Research Center TRR 181 ”Energy transfers in Atmosphere and Ocean“

Discover

Videos

Climate models easily explained

How can climate models help us predicting the climate? Find out about it in our new explain video. Watch the video
# All Videos ›
Info Graphics

Mesoscale Eddies

What are mesoscale Eddies and why are they important? Find out more on our second info graphic about "Mesoscale Eddies". Download as PDF
# All Graphics ›
Expeditions

Investigating Tidal Energy in the Subtropical Atlantic

In August 2017 Dr. Maren Walter and team explored in the subtropical Atlantic to measure energy fluxes along a tidal beam.
All Expeditions ›
Publications

A metric for success

Have a look on what has been published in journals or books by our scientists!
All Publications ›

About the project

Energy does not vanish

The energy of a closed system is steady. It is not lost but rather converted into other forms, such as when kinetic energy is transferred into thermal energy or vice versa heat results in a force.

However, this fundamental principle of natural science is often still a problem for climate research. For example, in case of the calculation of ocean currents, where small-scale vortices as well as mixing processes they induce need to be considered, without fully understanding where the energy for their creation originates from. This is similar in the atmosphere, the only difference being that air is moving instead of water. Again, local turbulences can drive larger movements or vice versa waves on a larger scale can disintegrate into small structures.

All these processes are important for the Earth’s climate and determine how temperatures will rise in the future.

Read more

Existing climate models show energetic and mathematical inconsistencies which may lead to fundamental errors in climate forecasts. Now is the right time to combine recent efforts in Meteorology, Oceanography and applied Mathematics and to go new ways.

Prof. Carsten Eden, Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability at Universität Hamburg, Speaker of TRR181 

Twitter

Latest Publications

  • Danilov, S., Juricke, S., Kutsenko, A. and Oliver, M. (2018). Toward consistent subgrid momentum closures in ocean models. Accepted by  „Energy Transfers in Atmosphere and Ocean“ A. Iske (ed.), Springer-Verlag

  • Juricke, S., MacLeod, D. Weisheimer, A. Zanna, L. and Palmer, T. (2018). Seasonal to annual ocean forecasting skill and the role of model and observational uncertainty, Accepted by Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.

  • Burchard, H., Bolding, K., Feistel, R., Gräwe, U., MacCready, P., Klingbeil, K., Mohrholz, V., Umlauf, L., and van der Lee, E. M. , (2018). The Knudsen theorem and the Total Exchange Flow analysis framework applied to the Baltic Sea, Progress in Oceanography, 165, 268-286 , https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pocean.2018.04.004 .

Participating Institutions