This video shows one year of simulations of the Earth’s climate performed with the coupled model ICON. In this coupled setup, ICON represents interactions between ocean and atmosphere, such as transfer of water, energy and carbon dioxide (CO2). HAMOCC, which stands for Hamburg Ocean Carbon Cycle model, is the ocean biogeochemistry component in ICON simulating biogeochemical cycles in the water-column and sediment, as well as interactions with the atmosphere.
Here we see phytoplankton concentrations in the surface ocean, as represented by HAMOCC in ICON. Phytoplankton are microscopic organisms at the base of the marine food web. Similar to land plants, phytoplankton blooms occur mainly during spring and summer months, when there is enough sunlight and nutrients (nitrate, phosphate and iron) in the upper ocean. Phytoplankton have photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll that fixes CO2 and contributes to the ocean’s capacity to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
In this video, we can see the seasonal patterns of phytoplankton blooms, and the signature of ocean mesoscale processes, such as eddies and tropical instability waves (the curly wave-forms around the equatorial ocean), in spatial distribution of phytoplankton. In this simulation, the ICON model has horizontal resolution of about 5 kilometers in both the ocean and atmosphere, which allows for the representation of such small, mesoscale processes in the ocean.
Simulation: MPI-M / UHH, funded by CLICCS and EU H2020 project ESM2025
Visualization: DKRZ
Links:
Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology (MP-M): https://mpimet.mpg.de/en/homepage
CLICCS / University of Hamburg (UHH): https://www.cliccs.uni-hamburg.de/
Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum (DKRZ): https://www.dkrz.de