OSNAP is an international programme designed to provide a continuous record of the full-water column, trans-basin fluxes of heat, mass and freshwater in the subpolar North Atlantic. The OSNAP observing system consists of two legs spanning the subpolar North Atlantic from southern Labrador to Greenland to Scotland.
Our involvement in OSNAP is in understanding the fluid dynamics relating variations in circulation and forcing to the subpolar North Atlantic to the overturning circulation downstream. This work involves the use of an adjoint model to explore sensitivity of the overturning to upstream forcing and circulation anomalies. This is part of the UK-OSNAP consortium funded by NERC.
We are now working on a follow-up collaborative project SNAP-DRAGON, led by Helen Johnson, which aims to establish what determines ocean circulation and properties in the subpolar North Atlantic, using a combination of observations, models and model-data products.
