This region is poorly studied and was thought to be less important for freshwater flow than the much wider Fram Strait, which connects to the Northern European seas. Their experiment showed that most of the freshwater reached the Labrador Sea through the Canadian Archipelago, a complex set of narrow passages between Canada and Greenland. Using a technique Zhang developed to track ocean salinity, the researchers simulated the ocean circulation and followed the Beaufort Sea freshwater's spread in a past event that occurred from 1983 to 1995. "But they rarely care where the freshwater goes, and we think that's a much more important problem." "People have already spent a lot of time studying why the Beaufort Sea freshwater has gotten so high in the past few decades," said Zhang, who began the work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. When those winds relax, the dome will flatten and the freshwater gets released into the North Atlantic. Fresher, lighter water floats at the top, and clockwise winds in the Beaufort Sea push that lighter water together to create a dome. But once it gets out, it can have a very large impact."įresher water reaches the Arctic Ocean through rain, snow, rivers, inflows from the relatively fresher Pacific Ocean, as well as the recent melting of Arctic Ocean sea ice. "Right now this freshwater is still trapped in the Arctic. "We know that the Arctic Ocean has one of the biggest climate change signals," said co-author Wei Cheng at the UW-based Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Atmosphere Studies. When those winds relax, the freshwater drains not through Fram Strait, but through the narrow channels of the Canadian Archipelago to reach the Labrador Sea, off the coast of Canada’s Newfoundland and Labrador. The Beaufort Gyre is a clockwise wind pattern in the western Arctic Ocean that causes freshwater to accumulate at the ocean’s surface. Fresher, lighter water entering the Labrador Sea could slow that overturning circulation. This pathway also affects larger oceanic currents, namely a conveyor-belt circulation in the Atlantic Ocean in which colder, heavier water sinks in the North Atlantic and comes back along the surface as the Gulf Stream. The finding has implications for the Labrador Sea marine environment, since Arctic water tends to be fresher but also rich in nutrients. "In the future, if the winds get weaker and the freshwater gets released, there is a potential for this high amount of water to have a big influence in the Labrador Sea region." "The Canadian Archipelago is a major conduit between the Arctic and the North Atlantic," said lead author Jiaxu Zhang, a UW postdoctoral researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies. A study from the University of Washington, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that this freshwater travels through the Canadian Archipelago to reach the Labrador Sea, rather than through the wider marine passageways that connect to seas in Northern Europe.
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