Michael Steele

PHC: A Global Ocean Hydrography with a High-Quality Arctic Ocean

A new gridded ocean climatology, the Polar Science Center Hydrographic Climatology (PHC), has been created that merges the 1998 version of the World Ocean Atlas with the new regional Arctic Ocean Atlas. The result is a global climatology for temperature and salinity that contains a good description of the Arctic Ocean and its environs. Monthly, seasonal, and annual average products have been generated. How the original datasets were prepared for merging, how the optimal interpolation procedure was performed, and characteristics of the resulting dataset are discussed, followed by a summary and discussion of future plans.

The large‐scale freshwater cycle of the Arctic

This paper synthesizes our understanding of the Arctics large-scale freshwater cycle. It combines terrestrial and oceanic observations with insights gained from the ERA-40 reanalysis and land surface and ice-ocean models. Annual mean freshwater input to the Arctic Ocean is dominated by river discharge (38%), inflow through Bering Strait (30%), and net precipitation (24%). Total freshwater export from the Arctic Ocean to the North Atlantic is dominated by transports through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (35%) and via Fram Strait as liquid (26%) and sea ice (25%). All terms are computed relative to a reference salinity of 34.8. Compared to earlier estimates, our budget features larger import of freshwater through Bering Strait and larger liquid phase export through Fram Strait. While there is no reason to expect a steady state, error analysis indicates that the difference between annual mean oceanic inflows and outflows (∼8% of the total inflow) is indistinguishable from zero. Freshwater in the Arctic Ocean has a mean residence time of about a decade. This is understood in that annual freshwater input, while large (∼8500 km3), is an order of magnitude smaller than oceanic freshwater storage of ∼84,000 km3. Freshwater in the atmosphere, as water vapor, has a residence time of about a week. Seasonality in Arctic Ocean freshwater storage is nevertheless highly uncertain, reflecting both sparse hydrographic data and insufficient information on sea ice volume. Uncertainties mask seasonal storage changes forced by freshwater fluxes. Of flux terms with sufficient data for analysis, Fram Strait ice outflow shows the largest interannual variability.

One more step toward a warmer Arctic

This study was motivated by a strong warming signal seen in mooring-based and oceanographic survey data collected in 2004 in the Eurasian Basin of the Arctic Ocean. The source of this and earlier Arctic Ocean changes lies in interactions between polar and sub-polar basins. Evidence suggests such changes are abrupt, or pulse-like, taking the form of propagating anomalies that can be traced to higher-latitudes. For example, an anomaly found in 2004 in the eastern Eurasian Basin took ∼1.5 years to propagate from the Norwegian Sea to the Fram Strait region, and additional ∼4.5–5 years to reach the Laptev Sea slope. While the causes of the observed changes will require further investigation, our conclusions are consistent with prevailing ideas suggesting the Arctic Ocean is in transition towards a new, warmer state.

Changing Arctic Ocean freshwater pathways

Freshening in the Canada basin of the Arctic Ocean began in the 1990s and continued to at least the end of 2008. By then, the Arctic Ocean might have gained four times as much fresh water as comprised the Great Salinity Anomalyof the 1970s, raising the spectre of slowing global ocean circulation. Freshening has been attributed to increased sea ice melting and contributions from runoff, but a leading explanation has been a strengthening of the Beaufort High—a characteristic peak in sea level atmospheric pressure—which tends to accelerate an anticyclonic (clockwise) wind pattern causing convergence of fresh surface water. Limited observations have made this explanation difficult to verify, and observations of increasing freshwater content under a weakened Beaufort High suggest that other factors must be affecting freshwater content. Here we use observations to show that during a time of record reductions in ice extent from 2005 to 2008, the dominant freshwater content changes were an increase in the Canada basin balanced by a decrease in the Eurasian basin. Observations are drawn from satellite data (sea surface height and ocean-bottom pressure) and in situ data. The freshwater changes were due to a cyclonic (anticlockwise) shift in the ocean pathway of Eurasian runoff forced by strengthening of the west-to-east Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation characterized by an increased Arctic Oscillation index. Our results confirm that runoff is an important influence on the Arctic Ocean and establish that the spatial and temporal manifestations of the runoff pathways are modulated by the Arctic Oscillation, rather than the strength of the wind-driven Beaufort Gyre circulation.

Arctic Ocean Warming Contributes to Reduced Polar Ice Cap

Analysis of modern and historical observations demonstrates that the temperature of the intermediate-depth (150–900 m) Atlantic water (AW) of the Arctic Ocean has increased in recent decades. The AW warming has been uneven in time; a local 1°C maximum was observed in the mid-1990s, followed by an intervening minimum and an additional warming that culminated in 2007 with temperatures higher than in the 1990s by 0.24°C. Relative to climatology from all data prior to 1999, the most extreme 2007 temperature anomalies of up to 1°C and higher were observed in the Eurasian and Makarov Basins. The AW warming was associated with a substantial (up to 75–90 m) shoaling of the upper AW boundary in the central Arctic Ocean and weakening of the Eurasian Basin upper-ocean stratification. Taken together, these observations suggest that the changes in the Eurasian Basin facilitated greater upward transfer of AW heat to the ocean surface layer. Available limited observations and results from a 1D ocean column model support this surmised upward spread of AW heat through the Eurasian Basin halocline. Experiments with a 3D coupled ice–ocean model in turn suggest a loss of 28–35 cm of ice thickness after 50 yr in response to the 0.5 W m−2 increase in AW ocean heat flux suggested by the 1D model. This amount of thinning is comparable to the 29 cm of ice thickness loss due to local atmospheric thermodynamic forcing estimated from observations of fast-ice thickness decline. The implication is that AW warming helped precondition the polar ice cap for the extreme ice loss observed in recent years.

Hydrography of the upper Arctic Ocean measured from the nuclear submarine U.S.S. Pargo

In 1993, the USS Pargo made the first civilian oceanographic submarine cruise in the Arctic Ocean. The hydrographic measurements provide a unique synoptic description of the upper Arctic Ocean. The results indicate that the influence of Atlantic Water has increased relative to existing climatologies. The front between waters with an Atlantic versus Pacific character has shifted from over the Lomonosov Ridge to roughly over the Alpha and Mendeleyev Ridges. Warm cores of Atlantic Water are observed over the Lomonosov and Mendeleyev Ridges. These data indicate a fundamental change in the circulation of the Arctic Ocean beginning in the early 1990s.

Analysis of the Arctic System for Freshwater Cycle Intensification: Observations and Expectations

Abstract Hydrologic cycle intensification is an expected manifestation of a warming climate. Although positive trends in several global average quantities have been reported, no previous studies have documented broad intensification across elements of the Arctic freshwater cycle (FWC). In this study, the authors examine the character and quantitative significance of changes in annual precipitation, evapotranspiration, and river discharge across the terrestrial pan-Arctic over the past several decades from observations and a suite of coupled general circulation models (GCMs). Trends in freshwater flux and storage derived from observations across the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas are also described. With few exceptions, precipitation, evapotranspiration, and river discharge fluxes from observations and the GCMs exhibit positive trends. Significant positive trends above the 90% confidence level, however, are not present for all of the observations. Greater confidence in the GCM trends arises through lowe...

Arctic Sea Ice Retreat in 2007 Follows Thinning Trend

The minimum of Arctic sea ice extent in the summer of 2007 was unprecedented in the historical record. A coupled ice–ocean model is used to determine the state of the ice and ocean over the past 29 yr to investigate the causes of this ice extent minimum within a historical perspective. It is found that even though the 2007 ice extent was strongly anomalous, the loss in total ice mass was not. Rather, the 2007 ice mass loss is largely consistent with a steady decrease in ice thickness that began in 1987. Since then, the simulated mean September ice thickness within the Arctic Ocean has declined from 3.7 to 2.6 m at a rate of 0.57 m decade 1 . Both the area coverage of thin ice at the beginning of the melt season and the total volume of ice lost in the summer have been steadily increasing. The combined impact of these two trends caused a large reduction in the September mean ice concentration in the Arctic Ocean. This created conditions during the summer of 2007 that allowed persistent winds to push the remaining ice from the Pacific side to the Atlantic side of the basin and more than usual into the Greenland Sea. This exposed large areas of open water, resulting in the record ice extent anomaly.

Recent Changes in Arctic Sea Ice: The Interplay between Ice Dynamics and Thermodynamics

Abstract It is well established that periods of high North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) index are characterized by a weakening of the surface high pressure and surface anticyclone in the Beaufort Sea and the intensification of the cyclonic circulation in the eastern Arctic Ocean. The response of Arctic sea ice to these atmospheric changes has been studied with a thickness distribution sea-ice model coupled to an ocean model. During a period of high NAO, 1989–96, the model shows a substantial reduction of ice advection into the eastern Arctic from the Canada Basin, and an increase of ice export through Fram Strait, both of which tend to deplete thick ice in the eastern Arctic Ocean and enhance it in the western Arctic, in an uneven dipolar pattern we call the East–West Arctic Anomaly Pattern (EWAAP). From the period 1979–88 with a lower-NAO index to the period 1988–96 with a high-NAO index, the simulated ice volume in the eastern Arctic drops by about a quarter, while that in the western Arctic increases by ...

Warming of the Arctic Ocean by a strengthened Atlantic Inflow: Model results

An ice-ocean model is used to examine the behavior of the Arctic Ocean in response to recent changes in Arctic climate. The model shows that, starting about 1989, there has been a significant warming and salinification in the Arctic Ocean, in agreement with recent observations. The warming and salinification occur mainly in the upper ocean owing to a sustained increase of Atlantic inflow both at Fram Strait and, most significantly, via the Barents Sea. The increased incoming warm and salty Atlantic Water “flushes” out cold and fresh Arctic Water, thus increasing the temperature and salinity of the upper ocean and resulting in more oceanic heat flux to the mixed layer and ice cover. Concomitantly, the model shows a continuing decrease in ice volume beginning in 1987.