Four years of temperature, salinity, and velocity data enable a direct computation of volume transport and a temporal description of water properties exchanged through the Bering Strait. The mean volume transport over the 4‐year period (September 1990 through September 1994) is 0.83 Sv northward with a weekly standard deviation of 0.66 Sv. The maximum error in this mean estimate is 30%. Interannual variability in transport is typically 0.1 Sv but can, at times, reach nearly 50% of the mean. The transport of 1.14 Sv during the first 9 months of 1994 is the largest in the last 50 years. The rate of winter salinity increase is very similar from year to year, suggesting regional average ice formation of about 5 cm d−1. The amplitude of the annual salinity cycle is about 2 psu, with salinity reaching a maximum in early April. There can be large interannual variations in the salinity (about 1), particularly in winter. Background autumn salinities average 32.0 in the eastern and 32.6 in the western channel.

No abstract

Abstract. We describe circulation and mixing in the Siberian Coastal Current (SCC) using fall shipboard measurements collected between 1992 and 1995 in the western Chukchi Sea. The SCC, forced by winds, Siberian river outflows, and ice melt, flows eastward from the East Siberian Sea. It is bounded offshore by a broad (---60 km) front separating cold, dilute Siberian Coastal Water from warmer, saltier Bering Sea Water. The alongshore flow is incoherent, because the current contains energetic eddies and squirts probably generated by frontal (baroclinic) instabilities. These enhance horizontal mixing and weaken the cross-shore density gradient along the SCC path. Eventually, the SCC converges with the northward flow from Bering Strait, whereupon it deflects offshore and mixes with that inflow. Deflection occurs where the alongshore pressure gradient The foregoing description implies that the SCC is largely driven by the positive buoyancy influx provided by river discharge. However, winds also play an important role on these 29,697

No abstract

Data from a shipboard hydrographic survey near 30°E in the Nansen Basin of the Arctic Ocean are used to investigate the structure and transport of the Atlantic Water boundary current. Two high‐resolution synoptic crossings of the current indicate that it is roughly 30 km wide and weakly middepth‐intensified. Using a previously determined definition of Atlantic Water, the transport of this water mass is calculated to be 1.6 ± 0.3 Sv, which is similar to the transport of Atlantic Water in the inner branch of the West Spitsbergen Current. At the time of the survey a small anticyclonic eddy of Atlantic Water was situated just offshore of the boundary current. The data suggest that the feature was recently detached from the boundary current, and, due to compensating effects of temperature and salinity on the thermal wind shear, the maximum swirl speed was situated below the hydrographic property core. Two other similar features were detected within our study domain, suggesting that these eddies are common and represent an effective means of fluxing warm and salty water from the boundary current into the interior. An atmospheric low‐pressure system transiting south of our study area resulted in southeasterly winds prior to and during the field measurements. A comparison to hydrographic data from the Pacific Water boundary current in the Canada Basin under similar atmospheric forcing suggests that upwelling was taking place during the survey. This provides a second mechanism related to cross‐stream exchange of heat and salt in this region of the Nansen Basin.