Maria S Merian Measures the Warming of the Arctic Ocean
10.10.2006 - Other
According to Dr Ursula Schauer of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) the water that flows from the Norwegian Sea to the Arctic has been an average 0.8 degrees Celsius warmer in 2006, than in 2005.
During the summer of 2006, scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, the University of Bremen and the Polish Institute of Oceanology, working aboard the 'Maria S. Merian' discovered water as warm as 4 degrees C as far north as 81° 20'N. They also found that warm, high salinity water from the north Atlantic has been pushing northward into the Arctic Ocean through the Fram strait in between Greenland and Spitzbergen. This would explain why species from the Norwegian Sea have also been discovered to migrate and survive further and further north.
The investigations are tied into a European research project DAMOCLES to monitor sea ice-atmosphere-ocean interactions.
