Modeling Arctic Ocean heat transport and warming episodes in the 20th century caused by the intruding Atlantic Water

• Main Authors: Wang Jia, Jin Meibing, Jun Takahashi, Tatsuo Suzuki, Igor V Polyakov L, Moto Ikeda, Fancois Saucier, Markus Meier
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Barents Sea; Bering Strait; Fram Strait; North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.492.514; http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/pubs/fulltext/2008/20080061.pdf

Abstract This study investigates the Arctic Ocean warming episodes in the 20th century using both a high-resolution coupled global climate model and historical ob-servations. The model, with.no flux adjustment, reproduces well the Atlantic Water core temperature (AWCT) in the Arctic Ocean and shows that four largest decadal-scale warming episodes occurred in the 1930s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, in agreement with the hydrographic observational data. The difference is that there was no pre-warming prior to the 1930s episode, while there were two pre-warming episodes in the 1970s and 80s prior to the 1990s, leading the 1990s into the largest and prolonged warming in the 20th century. Over the last century, the simulated heat transport via Fram Strait and the Barents Sea was estimated to be, on average, 31. 32 TW and 14. 82 TW, respectively, while the Bering Strait also provides 15.94 TW heat into the west-ern Arctic Ocean. Heat transport into the Arctic Ocean by the Atlantic Water via Fram Strait and the Barents Sea correlates significantly with AWCT (C =0.75) at 0-lag. The modeled North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index has a significant correla-tion with the heat transport (C =0.37). The observed AWCT has a significant corre-