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The evolving knowledge of the Arctic Ocean, its hydrography and its water masses and their transformations and circulation is reviewed starting with the observations made on Fram 1893-1896 and extending to the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2009. The expeditions and observations after Fram to the mid 20th century as well as the more extensive and systematic studies of water masses and circulation made from ice stations and airborne expeditions from the late 1940s to the late 1970s are briefly described. The early concepts of the connections and exchanges between the Arctic Ocean and the world ocean are also discussed. In the 1980s scientific icebreakers were beginning to enter the inner parts of the Arctic Ocean and large international programmes were launched, culminating in the IPY. The changes in the Arctic Ocean, first noted in the Atlantic layer in 1990 and shortly after in the upper layers, are described. The exchanges between the Arctic Ocean and the surrounding seas through the four main openings, Fram Strait, Barents Sea, Bering Strait and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago as well the volume and freshwater balances of the Arctic Ocean are examined.

Data from cruises between 1989 and 2003 with FS Polarstern were used to construct section-wide potential temperature and salinity time series of the main water masses in the Weddell Gyre. In tandem with these CTD data, two time series between 1989 and 1995 are presented from moored instruments in the central Weddell Sea. The regional and methodological consistency of the dataset allows us to quantify variations which are not visible in less homogeneous datasets. The data reveal significant temperature and salinity variations of the Warm Deep Water and the Weddell Sea Bottom Water on a decadal time scale. The longest time series were obtained at the prime meridian. Here warming is observed in the Warm Deep Water from 1992 to 1998 followed by cooling. In the Weddell Sea proper, measurements of instruments moored in the Weddell Sea Bottom Water layer recorded a temperature increase over 6 years at a rate of 0.01°C a )1 . After the mooring period, CTD casts in 1998 point to a weakening of the trend. The warming trend in the bottom water occurs over most of the Weddell Sea, as detected in the additional CTD surveys. The variations are close to the detection level in the voluminous Weddell Sea Deep Water. The initial warming trend of the Warm Deep Water is consistent with warming trends reported in literature of subsurface waters of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. The reversal of the trend in the Weddell Sea seems to be related to variations of the atmospheric conditions which can affect both the intrusion of Circumpolar Deep Water from the north and the circulation of the Weddell Gyre. Because the Warm Deep Water is the major source water for the formation of deep and bottom water in the Weddell Sea, it is suggested that its increase in temperature and salinity is likely to at least partly cause the variations which were observed in the bottom water.