What can hydrography tell Us about the strength of the Nordic Seas MOC over the last 70 to 100 years?

The flow of warm water into the Nordic Seas plays an important role for the mild climate of central and northern Europe. Here we estimate the stability of this flow thanks to the extensive hydrographic record that dates back to the early 1900s. Using all casts in two areas with little mean flow just south and north of the Greenland‐Scotland Ridge that bracket the two main inflow branches, we find a well‐defined approximately ±0.5 Sv volume transport (and a corresponding ±30 TW heat flux) variation in synchrony with the Atlantic multidecadal variability that peaked most recently around 2010 and is now trending down. No evidence is found for a long‐term trend in transport over the last 70 to 100 years

Rapid communication of upper‐ocean salinity anomaly to deep waters of the Iceland Basin indicates an AMOC short‐cut

The mooring observations of the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program reveal a significant freshening of the Iceland Scotland overflow waters that did not involve the Nordic Seas, the source of the dense Deep North Atlantic Water (Devana et al., 2021, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL094396). Their study suggests that this freshening at depth in the Iceland Basin stems from the largest upper-ocean freshening event in 120 years that rapidly communicated through entrainment with the Iceland Scotland Overflow Waters. This communication, which is very likely driven by strong wintertime heat losses, strongly adds to our thinking that the progression of this extreme freshening event is providing us with a natural tracer that is helping to identify and understand key processes that determine the strength and variability of the overturning circulation and its sensitivity to ongoing climate change. Continued monitoring of the overturning in the North Atlantic is therefore necessary

Linking coherent anticyclonic eddies in the Iceland basin to decadal oceanic variability in the subpolar north Atlantic

The Iceland Basin in the eastern Subpolar North Atlantic is an eddy-rich region characterized by intense anticyclonic eddy activity. Our study present the variability of coherent Anticyclonic Eddies (AEs) generated in this region, using satellite altimetry and two ocean eddy tracking algorithms. The yearly count of AEs in the Iceland Basin reveals a decadal variability similar to that of ocean heat content change in the eastern subpolar gyre. Periods with higher number of AEs coincide with periods of increased ocean heat content, and vice versa. However, both algorithms agree that more than 50% of the detected AEs are confined to the central Iceland Basin. The annual number of AEs also tracks zonal shifts of the subpolar front, a variable that can explain about 53 (77)% of the interannual (decadal) variability of AEs in the Iceland Basin. Finally, a Lagrangian approach is used to demonstrate that the amount of subtropical versus subpolar water masses reaching the Iceland Basin appears to influence, via baroclinic instability, the generation of AEs

Arctic Ocean and Hudson Bay freshwater exports: New estimates from 7 decades of hydrographic surveys on the Labrador Shelf

While reasonable knowledge of multi-decadal Arctic freshwater storage variability exists, we have little knowledge of Arctic freshwater exports on similar timescales. A hydrographic time series from the Labrador Shelf, spanning seven decades at annual resolution, is here used to quantify Arctic Ocean freshwater export variability west of Greenland. Output from a high-resolution coupled ice-ocean model is used to establish the representativeness of those hydrographic sections. Clear annual to decadal variability emerges, with high freshwater transports during the 1950s and 1970s–80s, and low transports in the 1960s, and from the mid-1990s to 2016, with typical amplitudes of 30 mSv (1 Sv = 106 m3 s-1). The variability in both the transports and cumulative volumes correlates well both with Arctic and North Atlantic freshwater storage changes on the same timescale. We refer to the "inshore branch" of the Labrador Current as the Labrador Coastal Current, because it is a dynamically- and geographically-distinct feature. It originates as the Hudson Bay outflow, and preserves variability from river runoff into the Hudson Bay catchment. We find a need for parallel, long-term freshwater transport measurements from Fram and Davis Straits, to better understand Arctic freshwater export control mechanisms and partitioning of variability between routes west and east of Greenland, and a need for better knowledge and understanding of year-round (solid and liquid) freshwater fluxes on the Labrador shelf. Our results have implications for wider, coherent atmospheric control on freshwater fluxes and content across the Arctic and northern North Atlantic Oceans

The relationship between the Eddy-Driven Jet Stream and Northern European Sea Level variability

publishedVersio

Discovery of an unrecognized pathway carrying overflow waters toward the Faroe Bank Channel

The dense overflow waters of the Nordic Seas are an integral link and important diagnostic for the stability of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The pathways feeding the overflow remain, however, poorly resolved. Here we use multiple observational platforms and an eddy-resolving ocean model to identify an unrecognized deep flow toward the Faroe Bank Channel. We demonstrate that anticyclonic wind forcing in the Nordic Seas via its regulation of the basin circulation plays a key role in activating an unrecognized overflow path from the Norwegian slope – at which times the overflow is anomalously strong. We further establish that, regardless of upstream pathways, the overflows are mostly carried by a deep jet banked against the eastern slope of the Faroe-Shetland Channel, contrary to previous thinking. This deep flow is thus the primary conduit of overflow water feeding the lower branch of the AMOC via the Faroe Bank Channel

North Atlantic extratropical and subpolar gyre variability during the last 120 years: a gridded dataset of surface temperature, salinity, and density. Part 1: dataset validation and RMS variability

We present a binned annual product (BINS) of sea surface temperature (SST), sea surface salinity (SSS), and sea surface density (SSD) observations for 1896–2015 of the subpolar North Atlantic between 40° N and 70° N, mostly excluding the shelf areas. The product of bin averages over spatial scales on the order of 200 to 500 km, reproducing most of the interannual variability in different time series covering at least the last three decades or of the along-track ship monitoring. Comparisons with other SSS and SST gridded products available since 1950 suggest that BINS captures the large decadal to multidecadal variability. Comparison with the HadSST3 SST product since 1896 also indicates that the decadal and multidecadal variability is usually well-reproduced, with small differences in long-term trends or in areas with marginal data coverage in either of the two products. Outside of the Labrador Sea and Greenland margins, interannual variability is rather similar in different seasons. Variability at periods longer than 15 years is a large part of the total interannual variability, both for SST and SSS, except possibly in the south-western part of the domain. Variability in SST and SSS increases towards the west, with the contribution of salinity variability to density dominating that of temperature in the western Atlantic, except close to the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Current in the southwest area. Weaker variability and larger relative temperature contributions to density changes are found in the eastern part of the gyre and south of Iceland

Sea-level variability and change along the Norwegian coast between 2003 and 2018 from satellite altimetry, tide gauges, and hydrography

Sea-level variations in coastal areas can differ significantly from those in the nearby open ocean. Monitoring coastal sea-level variations is therefore crucial to understand how climate variability can affect the densely populated coastal regions of the globe. In this paper, we study the sea-level variability along the coast of Norway by means of in situ records, satellite altimetry data, and a network of eight hydrographic stations over a period spanning 16 years (from 2003 to 2018). At first, we evaluate the performance of the ALES-reprocessed coastal altimetry dataset (1 Hz posting rate) by comparing it with the sea-level anomaly from tide gauges over a range of timescales, which include the long-term trend, the annual cycle, and the detrended and deseasoned sea-level anomaly. We find that coastal altimetry and conventional altimetry products perform similarly along the Norwegian coast. However, the agreement with tide gauges in terms of trends is on average 6 % better when we use the ALES coastal altimetry data. We later assess the steric contribution to the sea level along the Norwegian coast. While longer time series are necessary to evaluate the steric contribution to the sea-level trends, we find that the sea-level annual cycle is more affected by variations in temperature than in salinity and that both temperature and salinity give a comparable contribution to the detrended and deseasoned sea-level variability along the entire Norwegian coast. A conclusion from our study is that coastal regions poorly covered by tide gauges can benefit from our satellite-based approach to study and monitor sea-level change and variability

Interconnectivity between volume transports through Arctic straits

Arctic heat and freshwater budgets are highly sensitive to volume transports through the Arctic‐Subarctic straits. Here we study the interconnectivity of volume transports through Arctic straits in three models; two coupled global climate models, one with a third‐degree horizontal ocean resolution (HiGEM1.1) and one with a twelfth‐degree horizontal ocean resolution (HadGEM3), and one ocean‐only model with an idealized polar basin (tenth‐degree horizontal resolution). The two global climate models indicate that there is a strong anti‐correlation between the Bering Strait throughflow and the transport through the Nordic Seas, a second strong anti‐correlation between the transport through the Canadian Artic Archipelago (CAA) and the Nordic Seas transport, and a third strong anti‐correlation is found between the Fram Strait and the Barents Sea throughflows. We find that part of the strait correlations is due to the strait transports being coincidentally driven by large‐scale atmospheric forcing patterns. However, there is also a role for fast wave adjustments of some straits flows to perturbations in other straits since atmospheric forcing of individual strait flows alone cannot lead to near mass balance fortuitously every year. Idealized experiments with an ocean model (NEMO3.6) that investigate such causal strait relations suggest that perturbations in the Bering Strait are compensated preferentially in the Fram Strait due to the narrowness of the western Arctic shelf and the deeper depth of the Fram Strait

Ocean circulation causes the largest freshening event for 120 years in eastern subpolar North Atlantic

The Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation is important to the climate system because it carries heat and carbon northward, and from the surface to the deep ocean. The high salinity of the subpolar North Atlantic is a prerequisite for overturning circulation, and strong freshening could herald a slowdown. We show that the eastern subpolar North Atlantic underwent extreme freshening during 2012 to 2016, with a magnitude never seen before in 120 years of measurements. The cause was unusual winter wind patterns driving major changes in ocean circulation, including slowing of the North Atlantic Current and diversion of Arctic freshwater from the western boundary into the eastern basins. We find that wind-driven routing of Arctic-origin freshwater intimately links conditions on the North West Atlantic shelf and slope region with the eastern subpolar basins. This reveals the importance of atmospheric forcing of intra-basin circulation in determining the salinity of the subpolar North Atlantic