Volume and Heat Transports to the Arctic Ocean Via the Norwegian and Barents Seas

Skagseth, Øystein; Furevik, Tore; Ingvaldsen, Randi; Loeng, Harald; Mork, Kjell Arne; Orvik, Kjell Arild; Ozhigin, Vladimir K.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6774-7_3

Cited by 179 publications

(250 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Calculated baroclinic transports to the Barents Sea are of the same order as those measured by a Norwegian current meter array: an annual mean of 1.8 Sv (Skagseth et al, 2008). This transport changes over time, but variations do not compensate for the increasing northward volume transport during the warm periods.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 62%

“…This means that the change in AW transport is not the only consequence of the partition of AW between the Barents Sea and the Fram Strait. Skagseth et al (2008) show that inflow into the Barents Sea is enhanced by specific atmospheric conditions -a low-pressure system extending southwest of Iceland into the Barents Sea. A depression north of Bear Island may cause the northward AW flow to intensify.…”

Section: Temporal Variability In Wsc Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Influence of the West Spitsbergen Current on the local climate

Walczowski

Piechura

2011

Intl Journal of Climatology

119

101

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 62%

Section: Temporal Variability In Wsc Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Influence of the West Spitsbergen Current on the local climate

Walczowski

Piechura

2011

Intl Journal of Climatology

119

101

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“…Measurements indicate heat fluxes of about 50TW through the Barents Sea Opening (Skagseth et al 2008) and 30-40TW through Fram Strait (Schauer et al 2008). Obviously, EC-Earth underestimates the heat flux through Fram Strait.…”

Section: Ocean Heat Transportmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arctic climate change in 21st century CMIP5 simulations with EC-Earth

et al. 2012

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The Arctic climate change is analyzed in an ensemble of future projection simulations performed with the global coupled climate model EC-Earth2.3. EC-Earth simulates the twentieth century Arctic climate relatively well but the Arctic is about 2 K too cold and the sea ice thickness and extent are overestimated. In the twenty-first century, the results show a continuation and strengthening of the Arctic trends observed over the recent decades, which leads to a dramatically changed Arctic climate, especially in the high emission scenario RCP8.5. The annually averaged Arctic mean near-surface temperature increases by 12 K in RCP8.5, with largest warming in the Barents Sea region. The warming is most pronounced in winter and autumn and in the lower atmosphere. The Arctic winter temperature inversion is reduced in all scenarios and disappears in RCP8.5. The Arctic becomes ice free in September in all RCP8.5 simulations after a rapid reduction event without recovery around year 2060. Taking into account the overestimation of ice in the twentieth century, our model results indicate a likely ice-free Arctic in September around 2040. Sea ice reductions are most pronounced in the Barents Sea in all RCPs, which lead to the most dramatic changes in this region. Here, surface heat fluxes are strongly enhanced and the cloudiness is substantially decreased. The meridional heat flux into the Arctic is reduced in the atmosphere but increases in the ocean. This oceanic increase is dominated by an enhanced heat flux into the Barents Sea, which strongly contributes to the large sea ice reduction and surface-air warming in this region. Increased precipitation and river runoff lead to more freshwater input into the Arctic Ocean. However, most of the additional freshwater is stored in the Arctic Ocean while the total Arctic freshwater export only slightly increases.

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“…The Svinøy section is a key location for measuring the Atlantic inflow to the Norwegian Sea, due to the topographic steering of the Norwegian Atlantic Slope Current (NwASC) and its vertical structure. Skagseth et al (2008) estimate the volume flux from one single mooring in the core of the flow. After passing through the Svinøy section, the NwASC flows northwards into the Arctic and splits in two branches between Norway and the Spitsbergen and between the Barents Sea Opening (BSO) and the West Spitsbergen Current (WSC).…”

Section: Volume Transport Estimatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

TOPAZ4: an ocean-sea ice data assimilation system for the North Atlantic and Arctic

et al. 2012

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Abstract. We present a detailed description of TOPAZ4, the latest version of TOPAZ -a coupled ocean-sea ice data assimilation system for the North Atlantic Ocean and Arctic. It is the only operational, large-scale ocean data assimilation system that uses the ensemble Kalman filter. This means that TOPAZ features a time-evolving, state-dependent estimate of the state error covariance. Based on results from the pilot MyOcean reanalysis for 2003-2008, we demonstrate that TOPAZ4 produces a realistic estimate of the ocean circulation in the North Atlantic and the sea-ice variability in the Arctic. We find that the ensemble spread for temperature and sea-level remains fairly constant throughout the reanalysis demonstrating that the data assimilation system is robust to ensemble collapse. Moreover, the ensemble spread for ice concentration is well correlated with the actual errors. This indicates that the ensemble statistics provide reliable state-dependent error estimates -a feature that is unique to ensemble-based data assimilation systems. We demonstrate that the quality of the reanalysis changes when different sea surface temperature products are assimilated, or when in-situ profiles below the ice in the Arctic Ocean are assimilated. We find that data assimilation improves the match to independent observations compared to a free model. Improvements are particularly noticeable for ice thickness, salinity in the Arctic, and temperature in the Fram Strait, but not for transport estimates or underwater temperature. At the same time, the pilot reanalysis has revealed several flaws in the system that have degraded its performance. Finally, we show that a simple bias estimation scheme can effectively detect the seasonal or constant bias in temperature and sea-level.

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Volume and Heat Transports to the Arctic Ocean Via the Norwegian and Barents Seas

Cited by 179 publications

References 31 publications

Influence of the West Spitsbergen Current on the local climate

Influence of the West Spitsbergen Current on the local climate

Arctic climate change in 21st century CMIP5 simulations with EC-Earth

TOPAZ4: an ocean-sea ice data assimilation system for the North Atlantic and Arctic

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