Labrador Sea freshening linked to Beaufort Gyre freshwater release

• Published in: Nature Communications
• Main Authors: Zhang, Jiaxu, Weijer, Wilbert, Steele, Michael, Cheng, Wei, Verma, Tarun, Veneziani, Milena
• Other Authors: United States Department of Commerce | NOAA | Climate Program Office, DOE | Office of Science, DOE | LDRD | Los Alamos National Laboratory, United States Department of Defense | United States Navy | Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Science and Business Media LLC 2021
• Subjects: General Physics and Astronomy; General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology; General Chemistry; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Canadian Arctic Archipelago; Greenland; Arctic Archipelago; Fram Strait; Labrador Sea; North Atlantic; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21470-3; http://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21470-3.pdf; http://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21470-3

Abstract The Beaufort Gyre (BG), the largest Arctic Ocean freshwater reservoir, has drastically increased its liquid freshwater content by 40% in the past two decades. If released within a short period, the excess freshwater could potentially impact the large-scale ocean circulation by freshening the upper subpolar North Atlantic. Here, we track BG-sourced freshwater using passive tracers in a global ocean sea-ice model and show that this freshwater exited the Arctic mostly through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, rather than Fram Strait, during an historical release event in 1983–1995. The Labrador Sea is the most affected region in the subpolar North Atlantic, with a freshening of 0.2 psu on the western shelves and 0.4 psu in the Labrador Current. Given that the present BG freshwater content anomaly is twice the historical analog studied here, the impact of a future rapid release on Labrador Sea salinity could be significant, easily exceeding similar fluxes from Greenland meltwater.