Anomalous variations in the thermohaline structure of the Arctic Ocean (Aus dem Russ. übersetzt)

• Published in: Doklady Earth Sciences
• Main Authors: Frolov, I. E., Ashik, I. M., Kassens, Heidemarie, Polyakov, Igor V., Proshutinsky, A. Yu., Sokolov, V. T., Timokhov, Leonid A.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Interperiodica, Springer 2009
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Arctic Basin
• Online Access: https://oceanrep.geomar.de/id/eprint/13340/; https://oceanrep.geomar.de/id/eprint/13340/1/2009_Frolov-etal-Anomalous_DokEarthSci-429.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1134/S1028334X09090323

Introduction: In the last two decades, significant changes have occurred in the Arctic Ocean as well as in the entire Arctic region. The ice cover of Arctic seas, which was gradually (linearly) decreasing from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of it [1], began to shrink rapidly in the 1990s and in the 21st century [2]. Salinity variations in the upper layer changed sign in different regions [3]. The temperature of Atlantic waters in the Arctic basin started to increase. At the end of the 1990s, stabilization of Atlantic water transport to the Arctic Basin was observed [4], but starting from 2004, the temperature of Atlantic waters in the Eurasian sub-basin increased even more and reached values that had not been observed here previously [5]. In 2007, extreme summer processes in the Arctic that followed this increase and anomalous state of the ice cover and upper layer of the ocean that were formed by the beginning of autumn put forward a pressing problem to evaluate the variation in the thermohaline structure of the Arctic Ocean as a whole.