SMP Working Group: Community Synthesis and
Modeling
Group Leaders: Mick Follows and Scott Doney
Objective: To provide a unifying framework for the overall
JGOFS synthesis of the marine carbon cycle, up to and including the development
of community ocean biogeochemical models.
Background: The overall synthesis of JGOFS SMP should provide:
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our best state estimate for the global marine carbon cycle including fields,
rates, transports, and governing processes;
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a community resource base of observational data, synthetic products and
models that can be built upon by post-JGOFS researchers;
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an organizational framework for ongoing SMP activities.
A multi-faceted approach is called for that builds on and integrates the
common SMP activities identified at the PI meeting. The present OCMIP (Ocean
Carbon Model Intercomparison Project) can be viewed as our first attempt
to constrain global carbon cycle models with relatively crude biology.
The next step of the progression would be a community effort to compare
and validate global ecosystem models (an OEMIP if you want). For
that we need many of the products of the other SMP working groups, namely:
improved, tested ocean circulation models (OCMIP); better biological process
models (regional test beds); global validation data sets beyond what are
currently available (large-data sets); and tools for spatial extrapolation
of ocean biogeochemical fields for diagnosing and monitoring seasonal and
inter-annual variability of ocean biogeochemical fields (biogeochemical
remote sensing). A set of "community" models and best state estimates
of the carbon cycle would be natural outcomes of such an effort.
Tasks: Over the next year, the working group will hold
discussions primarily via email on the shape of the final synthesis and
how best to attain it. The overall JGOFS legacy will include:
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the JGOFS field data itself (CO2 survey; time-series; process studies),
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all of the PI lead research papers and special volumes,
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documentation of the scientific advances both in terms of conceptual synthesis
and modeling (e.g., a Cambridge textbook like approach with invited review
chapters on 10-20 topics),
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a set of local (1-D) and regional model test beds with the associated data
sets,
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a global ocean atlas with observed and synthetic fields (e.g., in addition
to those fields used for OCMIP including: satellite data; historical deep-traps;
floristic and community structure estimates; bottle chlorophyll),
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a set of validated global diagnostic and prognostic models.
Membership:
Mick Follows
Scott Doney
Rob DeConto
Jorge Sarmiento
Rick Murnane