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Arctic Research Programme

Identifying uncertainties in Arctic climate predictions - Invitation To Tender

Closing date: 16 April 2010

Tenders are invited for the provision of research to support the development of the Arctic research programme. Working with the UK Met Office, the contractor will use existing multi-model ensemble predictions, to identify the processes/feedbacks which contribute to the range of uncertainty in future predictions of Arctic sea ice and surface temperature changes.

NERC is seeking an individual or a small team from a NERC eligible UK research organisation to undertake the specified research over a period of approximately five months, between May 2010 and September 2010. The contract and its deliverables must be satisfactorily completed by 30 September 2010. Tenders for up to £50k total cost to NERC will be accepted (costs should be calculated at Full Economic Cost and the contract will be paid at 80% FEC).

The contractors will work closely with the Met Office to deliver the project. Their activities will focus on analysing the relative role of atmosphere and ocean processes in driving sea ice changes and applying methods to identify processes which lead to uncertainty in future predictions of Arctic sea ice and surface temperature in greater detail. In particular the contractors will be required to:

• Gain familiarity with the IPCC AR4 data.
• Carry out feedback analysis building on Winton (2006)* by extending to a greater range of models and to extract more detailed process information.
• Calculate ocean and atmosphere budgets from AR4 models to determine the relative roles of atmosphere and ocean processes.
• Develop methods which enable processes contributing to uncertainty to be identified in greater detail (for example, an understanding of the role of clouds in contributing to the uncertainty).
• Document results in such a way that they are understandable to Arctic scientists who do not have expertise in climate modelling.

The outputs will be used by the Arctic research programme, to inform the development of research proposals addressing its objective to reduce uncertainty in Arctic climate predictions.

The successful organisation will be engaged following a competitive selection process. Full details of the requirements are available in the invitation to tender document below.

Identifying uncertainties in Arctic climate predictions - invitation to tender (41KB)

Tenders should be submitted to NERC via email to
arctic-pag@nerc.ac.uk by 16:00 on 16 April 2010.

Contact details

Queries should be directed to:

Dr Sarah Collinge
Tel: 01793 411936

* M Winton, 'Amplified Arctic climate change: what does surface albedo feedback have to do with it?', Geophysical Research Letters, 33, doi:10.1029/2005GL025244, 2006.