Our common future ocean in the Earth system – quantifying coupled cycles of carbon, oxygen, and nutrients for determining and achieving safe operating spaces with respect to tipping points

COMFORT

Our common future ocean in the Earth system – quantifying coupled cycles of carbon, oxygen, and nutrients for determining and achieving safe operating spaces with respect to tipping points

COMFORT will close knowledge gaps for key ocean tipping elements under anthropogenic physical and chemical climate forcing through an interdisciplinary research approach. It will provide added value to decision and policy makers in terms of science based safe marine operating spaces, refined climate mitigation targets, and feasible long-term mitigation pathways. We will determine the consequences of passing tipping points in physical tipping elements for the marine carbon, oxygen, and nutrient cycles, as well as tipping points in biogeochemical tipping elements. The respective impact on marine ecosystems will be determined. Projections of the Earth system and impact studies have so far been carried out sequentially in a chain from scenarios to projections to off-line impact studies. This sequential workflow has hampered a quick response of the impact community back to revised scenarios and projections for tackling climate mitigation. COMFORT breaks new ground by bringing together experts from Earth system science, oceanography, fisheries science and ecology in a single integrated project who will work in parallel with a consistent set of analysis tools, scenarios, and interoperable models. The strength of COMFORT lies in the system-focused interdisciplinary approach as opposed to existing studies at the level of individual subsystems. The approach will be pursued with a firm link to stakeholders. COMFORT results will contribute to all four expected impacts for this call.

September, 2019

August, 2023

8191000

595000

EU / HORIZON 2020, Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials

Universitetet i Bergen (UiB), Norway

David Keller

University of Stockholm, Sweden
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH), Switzerland
University Bern, Switzerland
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Germany
University of Bremen, Germany
University of Hamburg, Germany
Max Planck Society (MPG), Germany
University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), Spain
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Spain
French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), France
École Normale Supérieure (ENS), France
Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS), France
METEO-FRANCE, France
Marine and Freshwater Insitute (MFRI), Iceland
Norwegian Institute of Marine Research, Norway
Norwegian Polar Institute, Norway
NORCE NORWEGIAN RESEARCH CENTRE AS, Norway
Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC), Norway
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), Sweden
Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PM), UK
University of East Anglia, UK
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), UK
University of Exeter, UK
University of Lancaster, UK
Dalhousie University, Canada
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa
Nansen Environmental Research Centre (INDIA), India
National Oceanography Centre (NOC), UK