This research will develop and evaluate a new system, based on pre-existing technology and expertise within the UK and Japan, which will improve the way in which we can detect, measure and study ocean biology based on species-specific genetic sequences. Current, best methods for the identification, enumeration and analysis of genetic sequences in the ocean rely upon the collection of water samples, which are returned to a centralized and highly resourced laboratory where they are processed and analyzed by highly trained technical staff. This takes time, delaying potentially important results (e.g. the presence and quantity of harmful species), and is expensive, limiting the number of samples that can be processed and ultimately reducing the resolution with which we can monitor ocean biology. This is now more important than ever as the oceans respond to changing climatic and anthropogenic influences. A key limiting step in this endeavor is the process of removing genetic material from the sample, whether it be whole cells, organisms or their remnants, and purifying it to the point at which it can be measured accurately; the 'extraction bottleneck.' Existing, automated sample processing robots are typically bulky, complicated, power hungry, prohibitively expensive, and not widely available. Microfluidic Lab on a Chip (LOC) technologies reduce the scale of analytical processes traditionally performed on a lab bench. For example, miniature pipes (typically one tenth of a millimetre across) together with miniature pumps, valves and optics are used to take in sample, and manipulate it along with a suite of reagents to undertake a relatively complex laboratory process in a fraction of the time with minimal sample / chemical consumption and robotically, thus obviating the need for a specialist. In this project, we will capitalize upon the advantages of LOC technology to address the extraction bottleneck with a novel device that will interface with 'front-end' samplers and 'back-end' analyzers to form an integrated, genetic sensor platform. This will be tailored for the detection and quantification of a range of target organisms of high importance to human health, ocean ecology and ocean-centric industries. The project will demonstrate proof of concept that the integration of LOC genetic extraction with existing samplers and analytics can significantly improve the resolution and ease with which we can monitor fundamental biological variables.

The atmosphere changes on time scales from seconds (or less) through to years. An example of the former are leaves swirling about the ground within a dust-devil, while an example of the latter is the quasibiennial oscillation (QBO) which occurs over the equator high up in the stratosphere. The QBO is seen as a slow meander of winds: from easterly to westerly to easterly over a time scale of about 2.5 years. This 'oscillation' is quite regular and so therefore is predictable out from months through to years. These winds have also been linked with weather events in the high latitude stratosphere during winter, and also with weather regimes in the North Atlantic and Europe. It is this combination of potential predictability and the association with weather which can affect people, businesses and ultimately economies which makes knowing more about these stratospheric winds desirable. However, it has been difficult to get this phenomenon reproduced in global climate models. We know that to get these winds in models one needs a good deal of (vertical) resolution. Perhaps better than 600-800m vertical resolution is needed. In most GCMs with a QBO this is the case, but why? We also know that there needs to be waves sloshing about, either ones that can be 'seen' in the models, or wave effects which are inferred by parameterisations. Get the right mix of waves and you can get a QBO. Get the wrong mix and you don't. Again we do not know entirely why. Furthermore, we also know convection bubbling up over the tropics and the slow migration of air upwards and out to the poles also has a big impact of resolving the QBO. All of these factors need to be constrained in some way to get a QBO. The trouble is that these factors are invariably different in different climate models. It is for this reason that getting a regular QBO in a climate model is so hard. This project is interested in exploring the sensitivity of the QBO to changes in resolution, diffusion and physics processes in lots of climate models and in reanalyses (models used with observations). To achieve this, we are seeking to bring together all the main modelling centres around the world and all the main researchers interested in the QBO to explore more robust ways of modelling this phenomena and looking for commonalities and differences in reanalyses. We hope that by doing this, we may get more modelling centres interested and thereby improve the number of models which can reproduce the QBO. We also hope that we can get a better understanding of those impacts seen in the North-Atlantic and around Europe and these may affect our seasonal predictions. The primary objective of QBOnet is to facilitate major advances in our understanding and modelling of the QBO by galvanizing international collaboration amongst researchers that are actively working on the QBO. Secondary objectives include: (1) Establish the methods and experiments required to most efficiently compare dominant processes involved in maintaining the QBO in different models and how they are modified by resolution, numerical representation and physics parameterisation. (2) Facilitate (1) by way of targeted visits by the PI and researchers with project partners and through a 3-4 day Workshop (3) Setup and promote a shared computing resource for both the QBOi and S-RIP QBO projects on the JASMIN facility

Antarctica is changing. In February 2022, sea ice around Antarctica reached the lowest area that has been observed since satellite records began in 1979. This marks the first time that the area of sea ice ice has been observed to shrink below 2 million square kilometres. Compared to the average minimum, the 2022 February minimum is missing an area of sea ice that is about three and a half times the size of the UK. Directly following on from the sea ice minimum, in March 2022 record air temperatures were recorded across much of East Antarctica, with some meteorological stations observing temperatures 40C warmer than normal. These unprecedented conditions were associated with a very intense 'atmospheric river', a narrow corridor of warm water vapour, bringing warm air and moisture to the high Antarctic Plateau. We do not know whether these extreme regional climatic events are just 'one offs', and highly unlikely to occur again, or whether they are an indication of how Antarctic climate will develop in the future. These recent extreme weather events and conditions in Antarctica have prompted fresh concern about how climate change in this remote region will impact Earth. The protection of coastlines around the world from the future rise in sea level from Antarctica requires a better understanding of how the weather of Antarctica will evolve over the coming century. Any loss of Antarctic ice mass as a result of weather changes may raise the sea level around the globe. SURFEIT will thus investigate how changing snow and radiation, or surface fluxes, over the coming century will affect Antarctic snow and ice. The international SURFEIT team will: (i) improve how polar clouds are represented in our climate models; (ii) use pre-existing, and new, observations alongside climate model output to help improve our understanding of changes in snowfall over Antarctica; (iii) ensure we can accurately predict small-scale and extreme-event weather changes; and (iv) improve how we link our earth and ice system model components together, so that we can make better predictions of when Antarctic ice may fracture, and so raise global sea level. Our work on improving snowfall and ice predictions will help us answer our overarching question 'How will changes in Antarctic surface fluxes impact global sea-level to 2100 and beyond?'

Subduction zones are located where one of the Earth's tectonic plates slides beneath another - this motion is controlled by the plate boundary fault. These plate boundary faults are capable of generating the largest earthquakes and tsunami on Earth, such as the 2011 Tohuku-oki, Japan and the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquakes, together responsible for ~250,000 fatalities. Although some plate boundary faults fail in catastrophic earthquakes, at some subduction margins the plates creep past each other effortlessly with no stress build-up along the fault, and therefore large earthquakes are not generated. Determining what controls whether a fault creeps or slips in large earthquakes is fundamental to assessing the seismic hazard communities living in the vicinity of plate boundary faults face and to our understanding of the earthquake process itself. In the last 15 years a completely new type of seismic phenomena has been discovered at subduction zones: silent earthquakes or slow slip events (SSEs). These are events that release as much energy as a large earthquake, but do so over several weeks or even months and there is no ground-shaking at all. SSEs may have the potential to trigger highly destructive earthquakes and tsunami, but whether this is possible and why SSEs occur at all are two of the most important questions in earthquake seismology today. We only know SSEs exist because they cause movements of the Earth that can be measured with GPS technology. Slow slip events have now been discovered at almost all subduction zones where there is a good, continuous GPS network, including Japan, Costa Rica, NW America and New Zealand. Importantly, there is recent evidence that SSEs preceded and may have triggered two of the largest earthquakes this decade, the 2011 Tohuki-oki and 2014 Iquique, Chile earthquakes. Therefore, there is an urgent societal need to better understand SSEs and their relationship to destructive earthquakes. We know little about SSEs because most of them occur at depths of 25-40 km: too deep to drill and to image clearly using seismic data, a remote method that uses high-energy sound waves to probe the Earth's crust. The Hikurangi margin of northern New Zealand is an important exception. Very shallow SSEs occur here at depths of c. 5 km below the sea bed, and they occur regularly every 1-2 years. This SSE zone is the only such zone worldwide within likely range of modern drilling capabilities and where we can image the fault clearly with seismic techniques - this location provides us with an opportunity to sample and image the fault zone that slowly slips. This will allow testing of a number of different hypotheses proposed to explain SSEs. We can also compare the properties of these rocks with drilling and seismic data from other locations such as Japan, where the faults behave differently and generate very large earthquakes. Through this comparison we can get closer to understanding why some subduction margin faults fail in large earthquakes and others do not and what fault properties control the different slip processes. Before the drilling can take place we need 3D seismic data to characterise the drill site to highlight any potential risks and to allow us to learn more about how rock properties vary in three dimensions away from the drill sites. Even before or without drilling the seismic images will provide important details of the slow slip process and fault properties. We will use a new technique, called full-waveform inversion (FWI) that can produce high resolution models of the speed of sound waves through the Earth's crust. Sound waves travel slower through rocks that contain a lot of fluids so we will look for low velocity anomalies signifying the presence of fluids, which models have suggested could allow generation of SSEs. The groundbreaking FWI imaging of the New Zealand subduction zone will be the first of its kind, providing information on fault zone properties at unprecedented resolution.

Plankton are the 'life blood' of the oceans where they carry out key ecological services. These include forming the main food stock of most fisheries, the ability to control our climate and the generation of half the oxygen we breathe. Plankton are tiny organisms, generally microscopic in size and are difficult to sample. In 1931 Sir Alister Hardy set up the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) Survey to help fishermanin the North Sea. The recorder is towed by merchant navy vessels on regular routes collecting plankton that are then analysed in the laboratory. Because of the demand for plankton data, the CPR Survey has grown and now operates at monthly frequency on standard tow routes in the North Atlantic, North Pacific and Arctic Oceans. In these oceans plankton are changing their abundance and distribution influenced by global change processes. For instance in the North Atalntic plankton have moved 1000 km northwards in 5 decades. This is due to large scale processes such as pollution, ocean acidification and climate change. The CPR SUrvey is managed by the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth UK. In the last 15 years, independent Surveys have been set up in Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada and China. South Africa, Namibia and Brazil wish to set up their own surveys. In each case the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science has helped these countries to set up their own surveys. This proposal is to create a Global Alliance for CPR Surveys (GACS) so that a global perspective can be achieved. GACS will be 'more than the sum of the individual parts' since we will move from a series of disconnected surveys towards a global perspective. This is needed to tackle the global challenges of climate, fisheries, pollution, and ocean acidification. The funding requested is to 'pump prime this process to enable the surveys to work together. A global database will be set up as will a website and newsletter. Training progarmmes involving secondment of staff will be set up. It is anticipated that GACS will be self sustaining once it is set and the way of working has been agreed.