Arctic Heart Beat and Disappearing Old Ice

February 21, 2014 by ohnwentsya Leave a comment

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Icy Seas

Have a look at this beautiful movie that shows how the Arctic Ocean moves its oldest and thickest ice around from 1987 through 2013:

[Credits: Dr. Mark Tschudi, University of Colorado and NOAA’s climate.gov.]

The Beaufort Gyre moves ice off western Canada and Alaska clockwise while the Fram Strait outflow between eastern Greenland and Spitsbergen exports much of the ice into the North Atlantic Ocean with the East Greenland Slope Current. The dividing line between the westward flux (into the Beaufort Gyre) and the eastward flux (into Fram Strait) stretch out to the north of the Canadian Archipelago and Greenland.

My only quibble is that, according to the movie, no old ice exits via Nares Strait or the Canadian Archipelago which is not true. During our field work in Nares Strait from 2003 through 2012 we always met rather heavy, thick, and old ice streaming south:

A graduate student…

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