Based on a unique dataset collected during a research cruise to the Irminger Sea in April 2015, a new paper reveals a strong link between atmospheric forcing, deep convection, ocean ventilation and anthropogenic carbon sequestration.
The Irminger Sea, a small ocean basin between Greenland and Iceland, is known for its harsh and extreme weather conditions during winter. Research cruises that take measurements in the subpolar North Atlantic almost exclusively do so in summer, although the area is particularly interesting in the convectively active winter season.
Based on a unique dataset collected during a research cruise to the Irminger Sea in April 2015, a new paper reveals a strong link between atmospheric forcing, deep convection, ocean ventilation and anthropogenic carbon sequestration.
The Irminger Sea, a small ocean basin between Greenland and Iceland, is known for its harsh and extreme weather conditions during winter. Research cruises that take measurements in the subpolar North Atlantic almost exclusively do so in summer, although the area is particularly interesting in the convectively active winter season.
Wintertime on-board ship measurements in the Irminger Sea were collected in April 2015 by scientists from the Bjerknes Centre for Climate research, as part of the SNACS project funded by the Norwegian Research Council. The results are now published in Nature Communications by Friederike Fröb, a PhD student at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Bergen and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, with colleagues from the University of Bergen, Uni Research Bergen, the University of Toronto and the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, both in Canada.
Compared to the far more famous Labrador Sea where deep convection is observed almost every year, convection in the Irminger Sea is more rare, and more variable in extent and strength. The 2015 data show record winter mixed layers of 1,400m depth – usually observed are 400m. The last time winter mixing had been that deep was probably in the mid-1990s, however, there is only indirect evidence for that; no direct measurements are available from that time. In the late 2000s, during the winters 2007/08 and 2011/12, convection down to between 800m and 1,000m was observed by ARGO floats. With the newly collected data in 2015, oxygen and carbon concentrations during active convection have been determined as well.
Continue reading at Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research
Image Credit: NASA
