ALBERT

Description: To examine the atmospheric responses to Arctic sea ice variability in the Northern Hemisphere cold season (from October to the following March), this study uses a coordinated set of large-ensemble experiments of nine atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs) forced with observed daily varying sea ice, sea surface temperature, and radiative forcings prescribed during the 1979–2014 period, together with a parallel set of experiments where Arctic sea ice is substituted by its climatology. The simulations of the former set reproduce the near-surface temperature trends in reanalysis data, with similar amplitude, and their multimodel ensemble mean (MMEM) shows decreasing sea level pressure over much of the polar cap and Eurasia in boreal autumn. The MMEM difference between the two experiments allows isolating the effects of Arctic sea ice loss, which explain a large portion of the Arctic warming trends in the lower troposphere and drive a small but statistically significant weakening of the wintertime Arctic Oscillation. The observed interannual covariability between sea ice extent in the Barents–Kara Seas and lagged atmospheric circulation is distinguished from the effects of confounding factors based on multiple regression, and quantitatively compared to the covariability in MMEMs. The interannual sea ice decline followed by a negative North Atlantic Oscillation–like anomaly found in observations is also seen in the MMEM differences, with consistent spatial structure but much smaller amplitude. This result suggests that the sea ice impacts on trends and interannual atmospheric variability simulated by AGCMs could be underestimated, but caution is needed because internal atmospheric variability may have affected the observed relationship.

Description: Published

Description: 8419–8443

Description: 2A. Fisica dell'alta atmosfera

Description: JCR Journal

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 52(6),(2022): 1191-1204, https://doi.org/10.1175/jpo-d-21-0242.1.

Description: A simplified quasigeostrophic (QG) analytical model together with an idealized numerical model are used to study the effect of uneven ice–ocean stress on the temporal evolution of the geostrophic current under sea ice. The tendency of the geostrophic velocity in the QG model is given as a function of the lateral gradient of vertical velocity and is further related to the ice–ocean stress with consideration of a surface boundary layer. Combining the analytical and numerical solutions, we demonstrate that the uneven stress between the ice and an initially surface-intensified, laterally sheared geostrophic current can drive an overturning circulation to trigger the displacement of isopycnals and modify the vertical structure of the geostrophic velocity. When the near-surface isopycnals become tilted in the opposite direction to the deeper ones, a subsurface velocity core is generated (via geostrophic setup). This mechanism should help understand the formation of subsurface currents in the edge of Chukchi and Beaufort Seas seen in observations. Furthermore, our solutions reveal a reversed flow extending from the bottom to the middepth, suggesting that the ice-induced overturning circulation potentially influences the currents in the deep layers of the Arctic Ocean, such as the Atlantic Water boundary current.

Description: This work was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant 2017YFA0604600), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 41676019), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant 2019B81214), the Postgraduate Research and Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (Grant KYCX19_0384), and the National Science Foundation (MAS, Grants OPP-1822334, OCE-2122633).

Description: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Kropp, H., Loranty, M. M., Natali, S. M., Kholodov, A. L., Rocha, A., V., Myers-Smith, I., Abbot, B. W., Abermann, J., Blanc-Betes, E., Blok, D., Blume-Werry, G., Boike, J., Breen, A. L., Cahoon, S. M. P., Christiansen, C. T., Douglas, T. A., Epstein, H. E., Frost, G., V., Goeckede, M., Hoye, T. T., Mamet, S. D., O'Donnell, J. A., Olefeldt, D., Phoenix, G. K., Salmon, V. G., Sannel, A. B. K., Smith, S. L., Sonnentag, O., Vaughn, L. S., Williams, M., Elberling, B., Gough, L., Hjort, J., Lafleur, P. M., Euskirchen, E. S., Heijmans, M. M. P. D., Humphreys, E. R., Iwata, H., Jones, B. M., Jorgenson, M. T., Gruenberg, I., Kim, Y., Laundre, J., Mauritz, M., Michelsen, A., Schaepman-Strub, G., Tape, K. D., Ueyama, M., Lee, B., Langley, K., & Lund, M. Shallow soils are warmer under trees and tall shrubs across arctic and boreal ecosystems. Environmental Research Letters, 16(1), (2021): 015001. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/abc994.

Description: Soils are warming as air temperatures rise across the Arctic and Boreal region concurrent with the expansion of tall-statured shrubs and trees in the tundra. Changes in vegetation structure and function are expected to alter soil thermal regimes, thereby modifying climate feedbacks related to permafrost thaw and carbon cycling. However, current understanding of vegetation impacts on soil temperature is limited to local or regional scales and lacks the generality necessary to predict soil warming and permafrost stability on a pan-Arctic scale. Here we synthesize shallow soil and air temperature observations with broad spatial and temporal coverage collected across 106 sites representing nine different vegetation types in the permafrost region. We showed ecosystems with tall-statured shrubs and trees (〉40 cm) have warmer shallow soils than those with short-statured tundra vegetation when normalized to a constant air temperature. In tree and tall shrub vegetation types, cooler temperatures in the warm season do not lead to cooler mean annual soil temperature indicating that ground thermal regimes in the cold-season rather than the warm-season are most critical for predicting soil warming in ecosystems underlain by permafrost. Our results suggest that the expansion of tall shrubs and trees into tundra regions can amplify shallow soil warming, and could increase the potential for increased seasonal thaw depth and increase soil carbon cycling rates and lead to increased carbon dioxide loss and further permafrost thaw.

Description: We thank G Peter Kershaw, LeeAnn Fishback, Cathy Wilson, and Coleen Iversen for assistance in collection of data. We thank the Permafrost Carbon Network for support and organization of the data synthesis. We thank Vladimir Romanovsky for his feedback and contribution of publicly available data. This project was supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. 1417745 to M L, Grant No. 1417700 to S M N, Grant No. 1417908 to A K, Grant No. 1556772 to A R, Grant No. 1637459 to L G, Grant No. 1636476 and Grant No. 1503912 to E S E, Grant No. 1806213 to B M J, Grant No. 1833056 to K D T), UK Natural Environment Research Council (Grant No. NE/M016323/1 to I H M S, Grant No. NE/K00025X/1 to G K P, Grant No. NE/K000292/1 to M W), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research (to P L, I H M S, Grant No. RGPIN-2016-04688 to D O), Council of Canada, Canadian Graduate Scholarship to (I H M -S), Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring Programme: ClimateBasis (to J A and K A), The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE Arctic) project is supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the DOE Office of Science (to A L B), Engineer Research and Development Center Army Direct (6.1) Research Program and the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (projects RC-2110 and 18-1170 to T A D), United States Geological Survey (to E E S), Arctic Challenge for Sustainability (ArCS; Grant No. JPMXD1300000000) and ArCS II (Grant No. JPMXD1420318865) (to M U and H I), the Danish National Research Foundation (Grant No. CENPERM DNRF100 to B E), the Academy of Finland (Grant No. 315519), the National Research Foundation of Korea (Grant Nos. NRF-2016M1A5A1901769; KOPRI-PN20081 to K Y and B Y L), Research Network for Geosciences in Berlin and Potsdam (to I G), the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant No. 140631 to G S S), the URPP Global Change and Biodiversity, University of Zurich (to G S S), the University of Alberta Northern Research Awards (to D O), and the Northern Scientific Training Program (to D O), and UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research (to V G S). S M has been supported by grants and/or in-kind from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, AMAX Northwest Mining, Co. (North American Tungsten Corp., Ltd), Imperial Oil, Ltd, University of Alberta, Earthwatch International (EI), The Garfield Weston Foundation, Wapusk National Park, Churchill Northern Studies Centre, and the Northern Scientific Training Program. All code for this project are archived (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4041165). The data that support the findings of this study are openly available through the Arctic Data Center (Heather Kropp, Michael Loranty, Britta Sannel, Jonathan O'Donnell, Elena Blanc-Betes, et al 2020. Synthesis of soil-air temperature and vegetation measurements in the pan-Arctic. 1990-2016. Arctic Data Center. doi:10.18739/A2736M31X).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 49(12), (2019): 3127-3143, doi: 10.1175/JPO-D-19-0011.1.

Description: The Intermediate Western Boundary Current (IWBC) transports Antarctic Intermediate Water across the Vitória–Trindade Ridge (VTR), a seamount chain at ~20°S off Brazil. Recent studies suggest that the IWBC develops a strong cyclonic recirculation in Tubarão Bight, upstream of the VTR, with weak time dependency. We herein use new quasi-synoptic observations, data from the Argo array, and a regional numerical model to describe the structure and variability of the IWBC and to investigate its dynamics. Both shipboard acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) data and trajectories of Argo floats confirm the existence of the IWBC recirculation, which is also captured by our Regional Oceanic Modeling System (ROMS) simulation. An “intermediate-layer” quasigeostrophic (QG) model indicates that the ROMS time-mean flow is a good proxy for the IWBC steady state, as revealed by largely parallel isolines of streamfunction ψ⎯ and potential vorticity Q⎯; a ψ⎯−Q⎯ scatter diagram also shows that the IWBC is potentially unstable. Further analysis of the ROMS simulation reveals that remotely generated, westward-propagating nonlinear eddies are the main source of variability in the region. These eddies enter the domain through the Tubarão Bight eastern edge and strongly interact with the IWBC. As they are advected downstream and negotiate the local topography, the eddies grow explosively through horizontal shear production.

Description: We thank Frank O. Smith for copy editing and proofreading this manuscript. This study was financed in part by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—CAPES, Brazil—Finance Code 001 and by Projeto REMARSUL (Processo CAPES 88882.158621/2014-01), Projeto VT-Dyn (Processo FAPESP 2015/21729-4) and Projeto SUBMESO (Processo CNPq 442926/2015-4). Rocha was supported by a WHOI Postdoctoral Scholarship.

Description: 2020-06-06

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 50(4), (2020): 887-905, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0110.1.

Description: The Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) encounters the Galápagos Archipelago on the equator as it flows eastward across the Pacific. The impact of the Galápagos Archipelago on the EUC in the eastern equatorial Pacific remains largely unknown. In this study, the path of the EUC as it reaches the Galápagos Archipelago is measured directly using high-resolution observations obtained by autonomous underwater gliders. Gliders were deployed along three lines that define a closed region with the Galápagos Archipelago as the eastern boundary and 93°W from 2°S to 2°N as the western boundary. Twelve transects were simultaneously occupied along the three lines during 52 days in April–May 2016. Analysis of individual glider transects and average sections along each line show that the EUC splits around the Galápagos Archipelago. Velocity normal to the transects is used to estimate net horizontal volume transport into the volume. Downward integration of the net horizontal transport profile provides an estimate of the time- and areal-averaged vertical velocity profile over the 52-day time period. Local maxima in vertical velocity occur at depths of 25 and 280 m with magnitudes of (1.7 ± 0.6) × 10−5 m s−1 and (8.0 ± 1.6) × 10−5 m s−1, respectively. Volume transport as a function of salinity indicates that water crossing 93°W south (north) of 0.4°S tends to flow around the south (north) side of the Galápagos Archipelago. Comparisons are made between previous observational and modeling studies with differences attributed to effects of the strong 2015/16 El Niño event, the annual cycle of local winds, and varying longitudes between studies of the equatorial Pacific.

Description: This work was supported by National Science Foundation (Grants OCE-1232971 and OCE-1233282) and the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship Program (Grant 80NSSC17K0443).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 50(10), (2020): 2849-2871, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-20-0086.1.

Description: The structure, transport, and seasonal variability of the West Greenland boundary current system near Cape Farewell are investigated using a high-resolution mooring array deployed from 2014 to 2018. The boundary current system is comprised of three components: the West Greenland Coastal Current, which advects cold and fresh Upper Polar Water (UPW); the West Greenland Current, which transports warm and salty Irminger Water (IW) along the upper slope and UPW at the surface; and the Deep Western Boundary Current, which advects dense overflow waters. Labrador Sea Water (LSW) is prevalent at the seaward side of the array within an offshore recirculation gyre and at the base of the West Greenland Current. The 4-yr mean transport of the full boundary current system is 31.1 ± 7.4 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1), with no clear seasonal signal. However, the individual water mass components exhibit seasonal cycles in hydrographic properties and transport. LSW penetrates the boundary current locally, through entrainment/mixing from the adjacent recirculation gyre, and also enters the current upstream in the Irminger Sea. IW is modified through air–sea interaction during winter along the length of its trajectory around the Irminger Sea, which converts some of the water to LSW. This, together with the seasonal increase in LSW entering the current, results in an anticorrelation in transport between these two water masses. The seasonality in UPW transport can be explained by remote wind forcing and subsequent adjustment via coastal trapped waves. Our results provide the first quantitatively robust observational description of the boundary current in the eastern Labrador Sea.

Description: A.P., R.S.P., F.B., D.J.T., and A.L.R. were funded by Grants OCE-1259618 and OCE-1756361 from the National Science Foundation. I.L.B, F.S., and J.H. were supported by U.S. National Science Foundation Grants OCE-1258823 and OCE-1756272. Mooring data from MA2 was funded by the European Union 7th Framework Programme (FP7 2007-2013) under Grant 308299 (NACLIM) and the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant 727852 (Blue-Action). J.K. and M.O. acknowledge EU Horizon 2020 funding Grants 727852 (Blue-action) and 862626 (EuroSea) and from the German Ministry of Research and Education (RACE Program). G.W.K.M. acknowledges funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

Description: © The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Bowen, J. C., Ward, C. P., Kling, G. W., & Cory, R. M. Arctic amplification of global warming strengthened by sunlight oxidation of permafrost carbon to CO2. Geophysical Research Letters, 47(12), (2020): e2020GL087085, doi:10.1029/2020GL087085.

Description: Once thawed, up to 15% of the ∼1,000 Pg of organic carbon (C) in arctic permafrost soils may be oxidized to carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2,100, amplifying climate change. However, predictions of this amplification strength ignore the oxidation of permafrost C to CO2 in surface waters (photomineralization). We characterized the wavelength dependence of permafrost dissolved organic carbon (DOC) photomineralization and demonstrate that iron catalyzes photomineralization of old DOC (4,000–6,300 a BP) derived from soil lignin and tannin. Rates of CO2 production from photomineralization of permafrost DOC are twofold higher than for modern DOC. Given that model predictions of future net loss of ecosystem C from thawing permafrost do not include the loss of CO2 to the atmosphere from DOC photomineralization, current predictions of an average of 208 Pg C loss by 2,299 may be too low by ~14%.

Description: This research was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER 1351745 (R.M.C.), DEB 1637459 and 1754835 (G.W.K.), the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Postdoctoral Program in Environmental Chemistry (R.M.C. and C.P.W.), the Frank and Lisina Hock Endowed Fund (C.P.W.), and the NOSAMS Graduate Student Internship Program (J.C.B.).

Description: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Baker, M. G., Aster, R. C., Wiens, D. A., Nyblade, A., Bromirski, P. D., Gerstoft, P., & Stephen, R. A. Teleseismic earthquake wavefields observed on the Ross Ice Shelf. Journal of Glaciology, 67(261), (2021): 58-74, https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2020.83.

Description: Observations of teleseismic earthquakes using broadband seismometers on the Ross Ice Shelf (RIS) must contend with environmental and structural processes that do not exist for land-sited seismometers. Important considerations are: (1) a broadband, multi-mode ambient wavefield excited by ocean gravity wave interactions with the ice shelf; (2) body wave reverberations produced by seismic impedance contrasts at the ice/water and water/seafloor interfaces and (3) decoupling of the solid Earth horizontal wavefield by the sub-shelf water column. We analyze seasonal and geographic variations in signal-to-noise ratios for teleseismic P-wave (0.5–2.0 s), S-wave (10–15 s) and surface wave (13–25 s) arrivals relative to the RIS noise field. We use ice and water layer reverberations generated by teleseismic P-waves to accurately estimate the sub-station thicknesses of these layers. We present observations consistent with the theoretically predicted transition of the water column from compressible to incompressible mechanics, relevant for vertically incident solid Earth waves with periods longer than 3 s. Finally, we observe symmetric-mode Lamb waves generated by teleseismic S-waves incident on the grounding zones. Despite their complexity, we conclude that teleseismic coda can be utilized for passive imaging of sub-shelf Earth structure, although longer deployments relative to conventional land-sited seismometers will be necessary to acquire adequate data.

Description: This research was supported by NSF grants PLR-1142518, 1141916, 1142126, 1246151, 1246416 and OPP-1744852 and 1744856.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.

Description: Operations in the Arctic Ocean are increasingly important due to the changing environment and the resulting global implications. These changes range from the availability of new global trade routes, accessibility of newly available resources in the area, and national security interests of the United States in the region. It’s necessary to build a greater understanding of the undersea environment and how it’s changing since these environmental changes have a direct impact on adjusting future operations in the region and looming global changes as less Arctic ice is present. The recent presence of the Beaufort Lens is changing the acoustic propagation paths throughout the Arctic region. Here a network of buoys were employed to communicate with an Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (AUV) while it operated under the ice throughout the Beaufort Lens with the goal of achieving near GPS quality navigation. The acoustic communications paths were compared using a vertical array throughout the Beaufort Lens. This beam forming was compared to the prediction from BELLHOP. As well, since acoustic communications are affected by multi-path, attenuation and interference from other sources it was interesting to note that bottom bounce was sometimes a reliable acoustic path.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 52(10), (2022): 2325–2341, https://doi.org/10.1175/jpo-d-21-0015.1.

Description: The ocean surface boundary layer is a gateway of energy transfer into the ocean. Wind-driven shear and meteorologically forced convection inject turbulent kinetic energy into the surface boundary layer, mixing the upper ocean and transforming its density structure. In the absence of direct observations or the capability to resolve subgrid-scale 3D turbulence in operational ocean models, the oceanography community relies on surface boundary layer similarity scalings (BLS) of shear and convective turbulence to represent this mixing. Despite their importance, near-surface mixing processes (and ubiquitous BLS representations of these processes) have been undersampled in high-energy forcing regimes such as the Southern Ocean. With the maturing of autonomous sampling platforms, there is now an opportunity to collect high-resolution spatial and temporal measurements in the full range of forcing conditions. Here, we characterize near-surface turbulence under strong wind forcing using the first long-duration glider microstructure survey of the Southern Ocean. We leverage these data to show that the measured turbulence is significantly higher than standard shear-convective BLS in the shallower parts of the surface boundary layer and lower than standard shear-convective BLS in the deeper parts of the surface boundary layer; the latter of which is not easily explained by present wave-effect literature. Consistent with the CBLAST (Coupled Boundary Layers and Air Sea Transfer) low winds experiment, this bias has the largest magnitude and spread in the shallowest 10% of the actively mixing layer under low-wind and breaking wave conditions, when relatively low levels of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) in surface regime are easily biased by wave events.

Description: This paper is VIMS Contribution 4103. Computational resources were provided by the VIMS Ocean-Atmosphere and Climate Change Research Fund. AUSSOM was supported by the OCE Division of the National Science Foundation (1558639).