Oceanographers used data from a pan-Arctic survey of carbon and trace elements to better understand how climate change will affect ecosystems in one of the fastest-warming regions of the world.
Significant quantities of carbon and trace elements are flowing across the central Arctic Ocean under the sea ice via freshwater runoff from rivers and continental shelf sediments, according to a new study by an international team of ocean scientists.
“This research is critical to understanding the current and future health of the Arctic Ocean, which is warming faster than much of the rest of the planet,” said Jessica Fitzsimmons, a co-author of the study and assistant professor in the Department of Oceanography at Texas A&M University.
“The Arctic is also receiving more freshwater with its changing climate, making an understanding of the chemistry and fate of that freshwater more important than ever before.”Texas A&M doctoral students Laramie Jensen and Tatiana Williford, along with Rainer Amon, professor of marine and coastal environmental science at Texas A&M – Galveston, were also co-authors of the study. Their results were recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans.
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