Tracking the sea ice exported from the Siberian Shelf to the Arctic Ocean

Science Highlights

26 November 2015

An original method based on the use of the couple salinity – δ18O allows determining the fractions of water that had been removed as ice across the shelf and the consequent net export of sea ice from Laptev and East Siberian Sea towards the remaining Arctic Ocean (860 km3/yr).

An important point is that this method does not assume an ice end-member of fixed composition, very powerful when applied on samples with large differences in salinity….

15 Rosen l

Figure: The map shows three geographical lines, sections, in the Laptev and East Siberian Sea. The sections stretch from the mouth of the Lena-, Indigirka- and Kolyma rivers and northward onto the shallow shelf. Based on the δ18O in the water, the vertical profiles indicate the amount of river water on the shelf (b, d and f) and also the fraction of water exported from the shelf as ice (a, c and e). Click here to view the figure larger.

Reference:

Rosén, P.-O., Andersson, P. S., Alling, V., Mörth, C.-M., Björk, G., Semiletov, I., & Porcelli, D. (2015). Ice export from the Laptev and East Siberian Sea derived from δ18O values. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 120. doi:10.1002/2015JC010866

Latest highlights

Continuous record of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current latitude over the last glacial-interglacial cycles

The meridional positions of the oceanic fronts separating subtropical and Antarctic waters are key to constraining the mechanisms that drive the degassing of deeply-stored CO2 at the end of the glacial periods…

23 Million Years of iron sources reconstructed in the Northwest Pacific Ocean using iron isotopes in a ferromanganese crust

Using iron isotopes and elemental records, Chu and co-workers analysed an iron-manganese crust recovered from the Hongyan Seamount, and reconstructed the sources of dissolved Fe to the Northwest Pacific Ocean…

Variability of the past deep-water masses in the Arabian Sea over the last 41ka

Shukla and colleagues propose a high-resolution authigenic ƐNd record measured from a sediment core located in the eastern Arabian Sea…

Arctic outflows to Davis Strait and the Labrador Sea traced by radionuclide distributions

This study demonstrates that Arctic outflows through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago play a much more significant role than previously recognised.

Rechercher