Earth Sciences: Oceanography: Projects: Page 7

An international and interdisciplinary initiative concerned with all aspects of mid-ocean ridges.

an oceanography mission to monitor global ocean circulation, discover the tie between the oceans and atmosphere, improve global climate predictions, and monitor events such as El Niño conditions and ocean eddies. The Jason-1 satellite carries a radar altimeter and it is a follow-on mission to the highly successful TOPEX/Poseidon mission. It is joint mission between France and USA. The satellite will be launched in May 2000.

The principal objective of the JERICHO project is to investigate which parts of Britain's coastline may have experienced an increase in wave height similar to that observed by satellites in the surrounding seas. The project is funded by the British National Space Centre and the UK Environment Agency.

An international programme to assess more accurately, and understand better the processes controlling, regional to global and seasonal to interannual fluxes of carbon between the atmosphere, surface ocean and ocean interior, and their sensitivity to climate changes.

LOIS was a 6 year project (1992 - 1998) of the UK's Natural Environment Research Council involving over 360 scientists from 11 institutes and 27 universities. This project was the United Kingdom's contribution to LOICZ. It aims were to quantify and simulate the fluxes and transformations of materials (sediments, nutrients, contaminants) into and out of the coastal zone, extending from the catchment to the edge of the continental shelf. The main study area, embracing river catchments, estuaries and coastal seas, was the UK East Coast from Berwick upon Tweed to Great Yarmouth, concentrating on the Humber and its catchment, and to a lesser extent the River Tweed. The shelf edge study was focused on an area to the west of Scotland.

Addressing the impact of sea level rise and the UK flood and coastal defence response on the internationally important habitats protected by the UK Habitats and Birds Directive.

The LATEX Program is a six-year oceanographic research initiative that has as its principal objective the identification of key dynamical processes governing the circulation, transport, and cross-shelf mixing of the waters on the Texas-Louisiana shelf

Uses novel syntheses of existing long-term data on temperature-sensitive, readily observed intertidal climate indicator species to make predictions on changes in coastal diversity that may result from global warming.

Concerned with potential eutrophication problems in coastal seas and the role of atmospheric deposition to these problems. Involved field experiments in the Kattegat, the results from which were used to develop predictive computer models.

Its aim is to develop coupled modelling and observational systems for the pelagic ecosystem, with emphasis on physical factors affecting zooplankton population dynamics. Marine Productivity provides a major UK contribution to the international Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics project (GLOBEC).