The Arctic Ocean—a Canadian perspective from IPY

Abstract

Canada's IPY program funded seven marine projects spanning the North American Arctic. Work embraced oceanography, air-sea interactions, storm response, paleoclimate and trace-element chemistry. Notable findings are emerging. Conditions in the Beaufort were unusual in 2007, with very high air pressure bringing strong winds, rapid ice drift, thin winter ice, enhanced shelf-break upwelling and a maximum in freshwater retention in the Beaufort Gyre. A mapping of trace chemicals suggests that Arctic mid-depth circulation may also have reversed. Study of Canadian Arctic through-flow revealed a net annual seawater export of 44,000 cubic kilometres from the Arctic to Baffin Bay. Observations of sea ice, sustained through the IPY, affirmed that ice cover is the key attribute of Arctic seas, with wind as a potent agent in its variation. Surveys have shown that the anthropogenic decline in seawater alkalinity is aggravated in the Arctic by low temperature and low salinity resulting from ice melt. Careful experiments have revealed that Arctic phytoplankton growth is constrained by scarcity of dissolved iron where light levels are low. A manganese fingerprint in sediments has tracked changing sea level during the Ice Age.Climatic Change

Dissolved gallium in the Beaufort Sea of the Western Arctic Ocean: A GEOTRACES cruise in the International Polar Year

“…1) sampled aboard the CCGS Amundsen in September 2009, a GEOTRACES cruise supporting the International Polar Year (Melling et al, 2012). Seawater was collected with GoFlo bottles attached to a trace metal clean rosette supported by a conducting Kevlar line (Giesbrecht et al, 2013), filtered into acid cleaned LDPE bottles utilizing trace metal clean practices, and acidified onboard the ship in a laminar flow hood.…”

“…Trace metal research in the Arctic Ocean has benefitted from the GEOTRACES program and the International Polar Year (Henderson et al, 2007;Melling et al, 2012), including observation of hydrothermal inputs of Mn (Middag et al, 2011) and Fe (Klunder et al, 2012), confirmation of dissolved Al concentration profiles unique to the Arctic (Giesbrecht et al, 2013;Moore, 1989;Middag et al, 2009), and classic Fe limitation of phytoplankton (de Baar et al, 2005) is shown to be paired with light limitation in the Arctic (Taylor et al, 2013). However, dissolved Ga has not been reported in the Arctic Ocean.…”

Freshwater and its role in the Arctic Marine System: Sources, disposition, storage, export, and physical and biogeochemical consequences in the Arctic and global oceans

“…Melling et al . [, ] used data from the Beaufort to demonstrate negligible trend in thickness there during 1991–2003 and during 1991–2008; thickness measured over 10 years in the northern Chukchi is also trendless (Melling, unpublished data, 2015). Apparently, climate change has not strongly impacted the thickness of Arctic first‐year pack.…”

Dense ampeliscid bed on the Canadian Beaufort Shelf: an explanation for species patterns

“…Biogeographic abbreviations: NEP (NE Pacific), NWP (NW Pacific), A (Arctic), NEA (NE Atlantic), NWA (NW Atlantic). The Bering Sea is considered to be in the Arctic as it is more Arctic than Pacific in temperature (Melling et al 2012) Sources Gurjanova (1951), Buchanan (1963), Kanneworff (1965Kanneworff ( , 1966, Mills (1965Mills ( , 1967Mills ( , 1971, Dickinson (1982Dickinson ( , 1983, Dauvin and Bellan-Santini (1990), Highsmith and Coyle (1991), Brandt (1996Brandt ( , 1997, Bellan-Santini and Dauvin (1997), Jørgensen et al (1999), Dauvin et al (2012Dauvin et al ( , 2017, Peart (2018) Surface sediment samples were analyzed at 57-161 of the 194 sites, with most sites being measured for grain size, N and organic C. Ampeliscids were present in mostly the full range of N and org. C sampled (0-0.42% N, 0.09-8.24% org.…”