Gathering Pool of Arctic Freshwater Could Cool Europe
24.01.2012 - Atmosphere & Space, Water & Oceans, Arctic
According to scientists from University College London and Britain’s National Oceanography Centre, a large pool of freshwater in the Arctic Ocean is growing larger, and could eventually cause the mild ocean current coming from the Gulf Stream to slow down, causing the climate in Europe to cool.
The volume of freshwater has increased by at least 8,000 km3, or 10% of the volume of freshwater in the Arctic Ocean. Their findings were published in Nature Geoscience.
The team used sea surface height measurements taken by satellite from 1995 to 2010, and found that the western Arctic’s sea surface has risen by 15 cm since 2002. They believe the bulge could be due to strong winds increasing the rate of the Beaufort Gyre, an ocean current in the Beaufort Sea North of Alaska and western Canada.
The Beaufort Gyre keeps a lot of freshwater, which comes from runoff from melting land ice, locked in one area. If the direction of the Beaufort Gyre were to reverse, as it did from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, the pool of fresh water could spill into rest of the Arctic Ocean and make its way into the North Atlantic, where it could affect a mild ocean current coming from the Gulf Stream, which give western Europe its mild winters.
The Beaufort Gyre is poorly understood. Some scientists believe its natural rhythms could be affected by climate change, which could have implications for ocean circulation and sea level rise. To learn more, the research team plans to do further research on sea ice cover and changes in wind direction.
