This paper presents a new hypothesis along with supporting evidence that the Beaufort Gyre (BG) plays a significant role in regulating the arctic climate variability. We propose and demonstrate that the BG accumulates a significant amount of fresh water (FW) during one climate regime (anticyclonic) and releases this water to the North Atlantic (NA) during another climate regime (cyclonic). This hypothesis can explain the origin of the salinity anomaly (SA) periodically found in the NA as well as its role in the decadal variability in the Arctic region.

No abstract

The water masses and circulation over the northern Greenland continental shelf are described based on two cruises to the region during the summers of 1979 and 1984. The cold Polar Water over the shelf was found to increase notably in salinity toward the shelf break and the East Greenland Polar Front. A colder, more saline, and relatively isolated fraction of the Polar Water was identified just above the Atlantic Intermediate Water of the front. A middepth layer, stable in time, indicates little vertical heat exchange. Warm Atlantic Intermediate Water was found to intrude close to the coast via a newly defined system of troughs in the shelf. The Polar Water was found to circulate over the shelf in a clockwise gyre. Baroclinic transports, northward near the coast with 0.58-Sv mean flow and southward elsewhere with 1.47-Sv mean flow, yielded a net southward transport in the East Greenland Current of 0.89 Sv.

A salinity‐temperature survey of Fram Strait in September 1985 extending to north of 81°N demonstrated the western branch of the West Spitsbergen Current flowing northwest and then west, mainly south of 81°N. There also was a southwestward recirculation from the eastern branch of the West Spitsbergen Current. Baroclinic flow of warm water northward through 81°N was negligible or zero. Some doubt is cast on past flow diagrams based on core analysis which show the western branch of the West Spitsbergen Current coursing northward to 83°N. One of a probable line of mesoscale eddies is described in some detail.

In August 1992 a combined physical oceanography and acoustic tomography experiment was conducted to describe the Barents Sea Polar Front (BSPF) and investigate its impact on the regional oceanography. The study area was an 80 x 70 km grid east of Bear Island where the front exhibits topographic trapping along the northern slope of the Bear Island Trough. Conductivity-temperature-depth, current meter, and acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) data, combined with tomographic cross sections, presented a highly resolved picture of the front in August. All hydrographic measurements were dominated by tidal signals, with the strongest signatures associated with the M2 and S2 semidiurnal species. Mean currents in the warm saline water to the south of the front, derived from a current meter mooring and ADCP data, were directed to the southwest and may be associated with a barotropic recirculation of Norwegian Atlantic WaterNAW) within the Bear Island Trough. The geostrophic component of the velocity was well correlated with the measured southwestward mean surface layer flow north of the front. The frontal structure was retrograde, as the frontal isopleths sloped opposite to the bathymetry. The surface signature of the front was dominated by salinity gradients associated with the confluence of Atlantic and Arctic water masses, both warmed by insolation to a depth of about 20 m. The surface manifestation of the front varied laterally on the order of 10 km associated with tidal oscillations. Below the mixed layer, temperature and salinity variations were compensating, defining a nearly barotropic front. The horizontal scale of the front in this region was ---3 km or less. At middepth beneath the frontal interface, tomographic cross sections indicated a high-frequency (---16 cpd) upslope motion of filaments of NAW origin. The summertime BSPF was confirmed to have many of the general characteristics of a shelf-slope frontal system [Mooers et al., 1978] as well as a topographic-circulatory front [Federov, 1983].