Physical Oceanography of the Arctic Ocean under Conditions of Changing Climate

A special issue of Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (ISSN 2077-1312). This special issue belongs to the section "Physical Oceanography".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 May 2022) | Viewed by 5512

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA
Interests: circulation of the Arctic Ocean; structure and variability of the Arctic Ocean boundary current; meso- and large-scale ocean dynamics; sea ice physics; ocean–ice interaction

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of the JMSE is focused on the analysis of changes in the marine environment of the Arctic Ocean, under conditions of changing climate. The rapid and unforeseen changes in the Arctic climate system are complex but still poorly understood and require further in-depth evaluation. Therefore, we invite researchers to submit studies dedicated to the analysis of oceanographic and sea ice observations collected in the Arctic Ocean in recent decades, and the modeling of physical processes responsible for the ongoing changes in the physical component of the polar climate system. This Special Issue aims to improve our understanding of the dynamics of the Arctic Ocean, transformations of water masses and their links to processes in sea ice, and the causes and mechanisms of recent changes in the components of the thermal and freshwater balance of the polar basin.

Dr. Andrey Pnyushkov
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • Arctic Ocean
  • oceanographic observations
  • Arctic Ocean circulation
  • water masses changes
  • freshwater and thermal balance
  • sea ice

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

29 pages, 8671 KiB  
Article
Automating the Acoustic Detection and Characterization of Sea Ice and Surface Waves
by Savannah J. Sandy, Seth L. Danielson and Andrew R. Mahoney
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(11), 1577; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10111577 - 25 Oct 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2531
Abstract
Monitoring the status of Arctic marine ecosystems is aided by multi-sensor oceanographic moorings that autonomously collect data year-round. In the northeast Chukchi Sea, an ASL Environmental Sciences Acoustic Zooplankton Fish Profiler (AZFP) collected data from the upper 30 m of the water column [...] Read more.
Monitoring the status of Arctic marine ecosystems is aided by multi-sensor oceanographic moorings that autonomously collect data year-round. In the northeast Chukchi Sea, an ASL Environmental Sciences Acoustic Zooplankton Fish Profiler (AZFP) collected data from the upper 30 m of the water column every 10–20 s from 2014 to 2020. We here describe the processing of the AZFP’s 455 kHz acoustic backscatter return signal for the purpose of developing methods to assist in characterizing local sea ice conditions. By applying a self-organizing map (SOM) machine learning algorithm to 15-min ensembles of these data, we are able to accurately differentiate between the presence of open water and sea ice, and thereby characterize statistical properties surface wave height envelopes and ice draft. The ability to algorithmically identify small-scale features within the information-dense acoustic dataset enables efficient and rich characterizations of environmental conditions, such as frequency of sparse ice floes in otherwise open water and brief open-water leads amidst the ice pack. Corrections for instrument tilt, speed of sound, and water level allow us to resolve the sea surface reflection interface to within approximately 0.06 ± 0.09 m. By automating the acoustic data processing and alleviating labor- and time-intensive analyses, we extract additional information from the AZFP backscatter data, which is otherwise used for assessing fish and zooplankton densities and behaviors. Beyond applications to new datasets, the approach opens possibilities for the efficient extraction of new information from existing upward-looking sonar records that have been collected in recent decades. Full article
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24 pages, 8839 KiB  
Article
On the Interplay between Freshwater Content and Hydrographic Conditions in the Arctic Ocean in the 1990s–2010s
by Andrey V. Pnyushkov, Genrikh V. Alekseev and Alexander V. Smirnov
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(3), 401; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10030401 - 10 Mar 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2056
Abstract
We investigated liquid freshwater content (FWC) in the upper 100 m layer of the Arctic Ocean using oceanographic observations covering the period from 1990 through 2018. Our analysis revealed two opposite tendencies in freshwater balance—the freshening in the Canada Basin at the mean [...] Read more.
We investigated liquid freshwater content (FWC) in the upper 100 m layer of the Arctic Ocean using oceanographic observations covering the period from 1990 through 2018. Our analysis revealed two opposite tendencies in freshwater balance—the freshening in the Canada Basin at the mean rate of 2.04 ± 0.64 m/decade and the salinization of the eastern Eurasian Basin (EB) at the rate of 0.96 ± 0.86 m/decade. In line with this, we found that the Arctic Ocean gained an additional 19,000 ± 1000 km3 of freshwater over the 1990–2018 period. FWC changes in the EB since 1990 demonstrate an intermittent pattern with the most rapid decrease (from ~5.5 to 3.8 m) having occurred between 2000 and 2005. The 1990–2018 FWC changes in the upper ocean were concurrent with prominent changes of the thermohaline properties of the intermediate Atlantic Water (AW)—the main source of salt and heat for the Arctic Basin. In the eastern EB, we found a 50 m rise of the upper AW boundary accompanied by a ~0.5 °C increase in the AW core temperature. The close relationship (R > 0.7 ± 0.2) between available potential energy in the layer above the AW and FWC in the eastern EB suggests a positive feedback mechanism that links the amount of freshwater with the intensity of vertical heat and salt exchange in the halocline and upper AW layers. Together with other mechanisms of Atlantification, this feedback creates a complex picture of interactions behind the observed changes in the hydrological and ice regimes of the Eurasian sector of the Arctic Ocean. Full article
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