Dataset Information

Enhanced eddy activity in the Beaufort Gyre in response to sea ice loss.

ABSTRACT: The Beaufort Gyre freshwater content has increased since the 1990s, potentially stabilizing in recent years. The mechanisms proposed to explain the stabilization involve either mesoscale eddy activity that opposes Ekman pumping or the reduction of Ekman pumping due to reduced sea ice-ocean surface stress. However, the relative importance of these mechanisms is unclear. Here, we present observational estimates of the Beaufort Gyre mechanical energy budget and show that energy dissipation and freshwater content stabilization by eddies increased in the late-2000s. The loss of sea ice and acceleration of ocean currents after 2007 resulted in enhanced mechanical energy input but without corresponding increases in potential energy storage. To balance the energy surplus, eddy dissipation and its role in gyre stabilization must have increased after 2007. Our results imply that declining Arctic sea ice will lead to an increasingly energetic Beaufort Gyre with eddies playing a greater role in its stabilization.

SUBMITTER: Armitage TWK

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7005044 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Enhanced eddy activity in the Beaufort Gyre in response to sea ice loss.

Armitage Thomas W K TWK Manucharyan Georgy E GE Petty Alek A AA Kwok Ron R Thompson Andrew F AF

Nature communications 20200206 1

The Beaufort Gyre freshwater content has increased since the 1990s, potentially stabilizing in recent years. The mechanisms proposed to explain the stabilization involve either mesoscale eddy activity that opposes Ekman pumping or the reduction of Ekman pumping due to reduced sea ice-ocean surface stress. However, the relative importance of these mechanisms is unclear. Here, we present observational estimates of the Beaufort Gyre mechanical energy budget and show that energy dissipation and fres ...[more]

PMID: 32029737

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Project description:Sea ice is an important marine phenomenon in the Arctic region, and it is of great importance to study the motion of Arctic sea ice in the present day when its melting is accelerated by global warming. This study proposes a method to retrieve the motion of sea ice based on the maximum cross-correlation (MCC) and the successive correction method (SCM). The proposed method can apply different scales of search ranges to template matching according to the location of sea ice in the Arctic area. In addition, the data assimilation method can assign different weights to different data. We used 36.5 GHz and 89 GHz brightness temperature (Tb) data from the microwave radiometer imager (MWRI) aboard the Fengyun-3D (FY-3D) satellite, for the first time in the literature, to retrieve the sea ice motion in the Beaufort Sea from January to April 2019. The retrieved sea ice motion results were in good agreement with those obtained from the motion of the buoys. Compared with the data from the buoys, the root mean-squared error (RMSE) of the sea ice motion retrieved from FY-3D/MWRI Tb data was 1.1418 cm/s in the zonal direction and 1.0481 cm/s in the meridional direction, and the mean absolute error (MAE) between them was 0.7166 cm/s in the zonal direction and 0.6777 cm/s in the meridional direction. The RMSE between the sea ice motion obtained from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and the motion of the buoys was 0.9515 cm/s in the zonal direction and 0.67003 cm/s in the meridional direction, and the MAE between them was 0.6576 cm/s in the zonal direction and 0.4922 cm/s in the meridional direction. The RMSE of daily average velocity from the FY-3D/MWRI results and NSIDC data product was 2.2726 cm/s in zonal and 1.9270 cm/s in meridional, and the MAE was 1.5103 cm/s in zonal and 1.1071 cm/s in zonal. The density of the merged data was higher than that obtained from a single polarization or frequency in this paper. The results indicate that FY-3D/MWRI Tb data can retrieve the sea ice motion successfully.

Dataset Information

Enhanced eddy activity in the Beaufort Gyre in response to sea ice loss.

Publications

Enhanced eddy activity in the Beaufort Gyre in response to sea ice loss.

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