The role of the Beaufort Gyre in Arctic climate variability: Seasonal to decadal climate scales

• Main Authors: Proshutinsky, A., Bourke, R.H., McLaughlin, F.A.
• Other Authors: Oceanography
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2002
• Subjects: Arctic; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10945/45461

The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2002GL015847 This paper presents a new hypothesis along with supporting evidence that the Beaufort Gyre (BG) plays a signific ant role in regulating the Arctic climate variabili ty. We propose and demonstrate that the BG accumulates a significant amount of fresh water (FW) during one climate regime (anticyclonic) and releases this water to the North Atlantic (NA) during another climate regime (cyclonic). This hypothesis can explain the origin of the salinity anomaly (SA) periodically found in the NA as well as its role in the decadal variability in the Arctic region. This research has been supported by a grant from NOAA. It is contribution 10756 of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.