Available master projects

Ocean carbon sink/source for 2 degrees warming target

Supervisor: Jerry Tjiputra, jetj@norceresearch.no (plus someone from UiB).

Topic/Goal: Quantify responses of ocean carbon sink in various pathways toward limiting climate warming to 2°C and below by end of 21st century and beyond. Investigate mechanistic changes in the CO2 fluxes and interior sequestration in hotspot regions such as the subpolar North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean. Elucidate the climate feedback and subsequent ecosystem impacts.

Methodology: Analyse an ensemble of Earth system model projections from the IPCC/CMIP6 database under the SSP1-2.6  and comparable scenarios that comply with the Paris climate target. Link changes in air-sea CO2fluxes to (1) trend in atmospheric CO2, (2) ventilation dynamics, and (3) biological processes.

Effect of declining sea ice on marine primary production in the Arctic

Supervisor: Annette Samuelsen Annette.Samuelsen@nersc.no and Caglar Yumruktepe (Nansen Centre) (supervisor from UiB Are Olsen: are.olsen@uib.no ):

Topic/goal: To understand how historically (past 20-30 years) changing sea ice coverage has affected primary production and the lower trophic levels in the Arctic Ocean and how sensitive the model estimates of primary production are to the choice of sea-ice model parameterization.

Methodology: HYCOM-CICE-ECOSMO is a coupled model system simulating the ocean, sea ice and nutrients and the lower trophic levels of the marine ecosystem. Task (1) to run a hindcast of HYCOM-CICE-ECOSMO and analysing the resulting primary production with respect to sea-ice variables. Task (2) change how light penetrates the sea ice in the sea-ice model and analyse how this changes the primary production estimates with respect to the results from task (1).

Nordic Seas C-13 Suess effect in marine sedimentary records

Supervisor: Are.Olsen@uib.no plus several people working on paleoceanography at GEO and NORCE (Ulysses Ninnemann, Hans Petter Sejrup, Carin Anderson Dahl, Fabian Bonitz, Margit Simon)

Goal/Topic: Understand how the decline in the atmospheric fraction of the stable carbon isotope 13C, a result of human emissions of CO2 penetrates the ocean and imprints itself on δ13C in sediment- and shell-based records of past ocean conditions.

Methodology: Synthesise Nordic Seas marine sediment and shell-based based records covering the past few hundred years and determine the magnitude and characteristics of thePage 2 of 213C Suess effect in these, and propose a unified framework for correcting for this effect in the various types of records, for use in current and future paleoceanographic investigations.

The sample list of available master projects is not exhaustive. Students who are interested in biogeochemistry are are encouraged to contact staff members of the biogeochemistry group to discuss potential master projects.