DESIRE (Dynamics of the Earth System and the Ice-Core Record): Chemical traces, sea conditions and meteorological model measurements

DESIRE (Dynamics of the Earth System and the Ice-Core Record) was part of Theme 2 QUEST (Quantifying and Understanding the Earth System) programme.

This dataset collection contains chemical traces, sea conditions and meteorological measurements from the Tropospheric Offline Model of Chemistry and Transport (TOMCAT) model and MITgcm (MIT General Circulation Model).

The project involved an Anglo-French collaboration between QUEST and INSU (Institut national des sciences de l'univers). The project responded to a call to “explain the major changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane concentration over glacial-interglacial timescales”. The project had three strands. In the first strand, tools to improve understanding and modelling of methane were worked on; this included improvements to models, as well as new constraining datasets. In the second strand, similar improvements for CO2 were to be made. The third strand included model simulations and a major data compilation covering the 800,000 year ice core period.

Much of the early research in this project used the simple Earth system model GENIE, which generally yields robust results. For example, CO2-forced transient simulations over 650,000 years reproduced Antarctic temperature anomalies with a high correlation, broadly capturing the QUEST Final Report, June 2011 22 magnitude of glacial-interglacial temperature changes. This study found that warm peaks in interglacials are consistent with changes in the meridional overturning circulation.

DESIRE（地球系统动力学与冰芯记录）项目构成了主题2 QUEST（量化与理解地球系统）计划的一部分。该数据集收集了来自Tropospheric Offline Model of Chemistry and Transport（TOMCAT）模型和MITgcm（MIT通用环流模型）的化学痕迹、海洋条件和气象测量数据。项目涉及QUEST与法国国家宇宙科学研究所（Institut national des sciences de l'univers，简称INSU）之间的英法合作。该项目响应了“解释大气二氧化碳和甲烷浓度在冰期与非冰期时间尺度上的主要变化”的号召。项目分为三个主要部分。在第一部分中，致力于研究和开发提升对甲烷理解和建模的工具；这包括对模型进行改进，以及新约束数据集的构建。在第二部分中，对二氧化碳的类似改进工作亦被提出。第三部分则包括了模型模拟和覆盖80万年的冰芯时期的主要数据汇编。在项目的早期研究中，大量使用了简单的地球系统模型GENIE，该模型通常能产生稳健的结果。例如，在650万年时间尺度上的二氧化碳强迫瞬态模拟，与南极温度异常高度相关，大致捕捉了QUEST最终报告（2011年6月）中冰期与非冰期温度变化的幅度。该研究指出，间冰期的温暖峰值与经向翻转环流的变化相一致。