• Main Authors: Leif G. Anderson, Staffan Kaltin
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Barents Sea; Sakshaug; Climate change
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.463.5185; http://www.polarresearch.net/index.php/polar/article/download/6521/7354/

Most climate scientists do not question whether climate change might occur, but when and how this change will develop. The primary tools for prediction are coupled atmosphere–ocean Global Circulation Models (GCMs) run under different scenarios of atmospheric greenhouse gas increase. Ongoing research is being performed to improve the physics in the various components of these models, but they can never have reliable predictive capability unless they include the relevant proc-esses and feedbacks in an appropriate way. One aspect of these processes and feedbacks relates to the atmosphere–ocean exchange of carbon diox-ide. How will the present-day driving forces be affected by climate change? The Barents Sea is a region where changes in the driving forces can have a significant impact on the thermohaline circulation, and therefore on climate. Much of the warm, high salinity Atlan-tic Water that flows into the Arctic Ocean enters the Barents Sea. During transit through the Bar-ents Sea, the Atlantic water masses lose heat and thereby gain a sufficient density increase to pro-duce intermediate and deep waters of the Arctic Ocean (e.g. Schauer et al. 1997; Anderson et al. 1999). The significant cooling of the surface waters in the Barents Sea also drives a flux of CO2 from the atmosphere into the sea, a flux that is amplified by extensive biological primary pro-duction (Walsh 1989; Sakshaug et al. 1994). The formation of subsurface waters in the Arctic Med-iterranean seas transport carbon, which partly include CO2 of atmospheric origin (Anderson et al. 1998a). The increased transport by the Gulf Stream during high NAO index (Hurrell 1995) conditions Carbon fluxes in the Arctic Ocean— potential impact by climate change