Hosts: Andrew Ross and Vimal Koul

The Northwest Atlantic (NWA) Shelf is home to ecologically and economically important fisheries. This region is also a hotspot of rapid ocean warming seen in the past three decades which has led to detrimental impacts on large marine ecosystems in this region. Observations suggest multiple drivers of this warming, one of which is the northward shift of the Gulf Stream. We lack a robust understanding of the dynamical underpinnings of this relationship between the Gulf Stream and sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in regional high resolution ocean models. We propose to examine the impact of the Gulf Stream on NWA SST in regional ocean simulations carried out with a regional 1/12° MOM6 ocean model forced with a coarse and a high resolution atmospheric forcing. These experiments are designed to test the null hypothesis that the meridional shifts in the Gulf-Stream are largely associated with large scale oceanic variability and as such the impact of atmospheric forcing resolution on the Gulf Stream–SST relationship on the NWA Shelf is negligible. We do, however, expect an impact of the atmospheric forcing resolution on model biases in the Gulf Stream region. Overall, the outcome of this work should reveal the merits in the present strategy of forcing regional ocean models with coarse resolution atmospheric forcing for decadal predictions and establish our confidence in predictions of near-future ocean and ecosystem conditions. Experience in computer programming and numerical model data analysis, particularly using Python, or a strong interest in learning how to do so, is highly recommended for this project.