5.3.2.2 Arctic Ocean

Climate change in the Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas is closely linked to the North Atlantic subpolar gyre (Østerhus et al., 2005). Within the Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas, surface temperature has increased since the mid-1980s and continues to increase (Comiso, 2003). In the Atlantic waters entering the Nordic Seas, a temperature increase in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Quadfasel et al., 1991; Carmack et al., 1995) has been associated with the transition in the 1980s towards more positive NAO states. Warm Atlantic waters have also been observed to enter the Arctic as pulses via Fram Strait and then along the slope to the Laptev Sea (Polyakov et al., 2005); the increased heat content and increased transport in the pulses both contribute to net warming of the arctic waters (Schauer et al., 2004). Multi-decadal variability in the temperature of the Atlantic Water core affecting the top 400 m in the Arctic Ocean has been documented (Polyakov et al., 2004). Within the Arctic, salinity increased in the upper layers of the Amundsen and Makarov Basins, while salinity of the upper layers in the Canada Basin decreased (Morison et al., 1998). Compared to the 1980s, the area of upper waters of Pacific origin has decreased (McLaughlin et al., 1996; Steele and Boyd, 1998).

During the 1990s, changed winds caused eastward redirection of river runoff from the Laptev Sea (Lena River, etc.), reducing the low-salinity surface layer in the central Arctic Ocean (Steele and Boyd, 1998), thus allowing greater convection and heat transport into the surface arctic layer from the more saline subsurface Atlantic layer. Thereafter, however, the stratification in the central Arctic (Amundsen Basin) increased and a low-salinity mixed layer was again observed at the North Pole in 2001, possibly due to a circulation change that restored the river water input (Björk et al., 2002). Circulation variability that shifts the balance of fresh and saline surface waters in the Arctic, with associated changes in sea ice, might be associated with the NAM (Proshutinsky and Johnson, 1997; Rigor et al., 2002), however, the long-term decline in arctic sea ice cover appears to be independent of the NAM (Comiso, 2002). While there is significant decadal variability in the Arctic Ocean, no systematic long-term trend in subsurface arctic waters has been identified.