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

Combined effort for consistent ocean and atmosphere models.

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Interdisciplinary research for a common goal

Joint work of oceanographers, meteorologists and mathematicians.

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Strengthens northern German Collaboration

Participation of scientists from Hamburg, Bremen and Rostock.

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

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Videos

Numerical methods in climate research easily explained

We explain numerical methods in climate research are and why they are important for our projects´research. Watch here
Expeditions

The ocean cannot only be investigated from home

Here you can explore impressions of the TRR 181 expeditions and find more information about what it's like to go offshore and investigate processes at the place where they are happening. All Expeditions
Publications

A metric for success

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

What it's like to be a researcher in the TRR181

Dive into what it's like to be an Early Career Scientist in the TRR and discover reports by our PhD students from all subprojects! All Reports
Newsletter

Being up to date

Our newsletter "Energy Inflow" comes out every three months and includes information about what happened in the project recently, give an overview of who is who and what will happen in the next weeks. All Newsletters

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.

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Being Part of the Team: What TRR 181 PhDs say

  • What did you enjoy most as part of the TRR team?

    "I really enjoyed our Winter Schools, as a platform to communicate science, to acquire soft skills, but also to simply chat or to engage in activities with members of the TRR-family." - Florian Noethen

  • What did you enjoy most as part of the TRR team?

    "Being part of such an interdisciplinary and multicultural project is what I liked most since it allowed me to expand my scientific horizons." - Evridiki Chrysagi

  • What did you enjoy most as part of the TRR team?

    "I found the most enjoyable of being part of TRR team is that the TRR strongly supports in finance for PhDs going to both inland and abroad conferences." - Jen-Ping Peng

  • What did you enjoy most as part of the TRR team?

    "Winter Schools and Retreats were the best part provided me with an opportunity to improve my different skills besides academic ones." - Gökce Tuba Masur

  • What did you enjoy most as part of the TRR team?

    "What I enjoy most in the TRR is the interdisciplinary. It is a great opportunity to gather different opinions from various fields for similar problems. This is especially interesting for me as a PhD student who is often very focused on one own narrow discipline." - Jonas Löb

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 

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Latest Publications

  • Mehlmann, C. & Gutjahr, O. (2022). Discretization of sea ice dynamics in the tangent plane to the sphere by a CD-grid-type finite element. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, doi: https://doi.org/10.1029/2022MS003010. 

  • Carpenter, J.R., Buckley, M., & Veron, F. (2022): Evidence of the critical layer mechanism in growing wind waves. Journal of Fluid Mechanics 948, A26, doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2022.714.

  • Streffing, J., Scholz, P., Koldunov, N., Danilov, S., Juricke, S., Jung, T. et al. (2022): AWI-CM3 coupled climate model: description and evaluation experiments for a prototype post-CMIP6 model. Geosci. Model Dev. 15, 6399–6427, doi: https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-6399-2022. 

Participating Institutions