Melting Sea Ice Awakens Arctic Ocean
08.01.2010 - Water & Oceans, Ice & Snow, Flora & Fauna, Arctic
Results of a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters have shown that the Arctic Ocean’s waters are increasingly supporting summer marine life due to warming-related sea ice loss. Until recently considered to be a rather quiet ocean, researchers from the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory in Seattle have come to this conclusion using data collected from moorings deployed in the Chukchi Sea.
For millennia, the Arctic Ocean’s depths have been quiet due to ice cover preventing winds at the surface of the ocean from stirring things up. But this is no longer the case as sea ice loss is creating internal waves that are stirring up the expanses of water around the northern continental shelves of North America and Asia.
Since internal waves keep the ocean constantly turbulent, fertile and unable to settle into quiet pools with warmer waters on top and cooler waters rich in nutrients ate the bottom, the presence of these waves could drastically change marine ecosystems in the Arctic. Increased wave action will likely bring nutrients closer to the surface, where abundant sunlight is available in ice-free areas, and feed summer plankton blooms. Given plankton is a primary producer (at the base of the food web), an increase in their biomass could have profound effects up the Arctic marine food web.
The increasing abundance of underwater waves in the Arctic is also raising worries as to whether or not a more active Arctic Ocean could accelerate the loss of sea ice. The researchers state that the only certainty they have at this time is that the Arctic is bound to become a place of greater seasonal extremes with more internal waves, mixing, and more active marine life during the summer, and the return to quiet during the winter months.
LINKS:
http://europa.agu.org:8005/?view=article&uri=/journals/gl/gl0923/2009GL041291/2009GL041291.xml&t=gl,rainville
