Autonomous buoys were deployed in 2011 in the central Arctic: An Ice-Tethered Profiler (ITP) and Ice Mass Balance (IMB) buoys were deployed in the Makarov basin; a Polar Ocean Profiling System (POPS) and Ice Thickness (Ice-T) buoy were deployed on the Eurasian Basin. The two different sites were approximately 70km...
The Bering Sea Shelf transitions from ice-free to mostly ice-covered and back again over each winter. Sea ice coverage and the timing of ice melt play a critical role in determining shelf structure and consequently ecosystem response during the spring transition and summer. In this study, a 2-km resolution ocean...
During the last glacial period atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature in Antarctica varied in a similar fashion on millennial time scales, but previous work indicates that these changes were gradual. In a detailed analysis of one event we now find that approximately half of the CO₂ increase that occurred during...
A primary focus of the US Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics
(GLOBEC) program was to identify the mechanisms of ecosystem response to large-scale
climate forcing under the assumption that bottom-up forcing controls a large
fraction of marine ecosystem variability. At the beginning of GLOBEC, the prevailing
bottom-up forcing hypothesis was that...
The global cryosphere, defined as the world’s ice and snow covered regions, is a crucial water source for society and ecosystem functions, as well as an important regulator of the earth’s energy budget. Melt from glaciers and seasonal snow cover provides water for more than a sixth of the world’s...
Atmospheric pressure changes do not stop at the permeable snow surface but rather propagate into it. These pressure changes range from high-amplitude, low-frequency events caused by seasonal cycles and synoptic weather systems to small-amplitude, high-frequency events caused by topographic features and turbulence. The effect of pressure changes on interstitial air...
We present a high-resolution Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mascon solution for Gulf of Alaska (GOA) glaciers and compare this with in situ glaciological, climate and other remote-sensing observations. Our GRACE solution yields a GOA glacier mass balance of -65 ± 11 Gta⁻¹ for the period December 2003 to...
In late 2007, two massive icebergs, C19a and B15a, drifted into open water and slowly disintegrated in the southernmost Pacific Ocean. Archived acoustic records show that the high-intensity underwater sounds accompanying this breakup increased ocean noise levels at mid-to-equatorial latitudes over a period of ~1.5 years. More typically, seasonal variations...
During rapid variations of the atmospheric mixing ratio of a trace gas, diffusive transport in the porous firn layer atop ice sheets and glaciers alters the isotopic composition of that gas relative to the overlying atmosphere. Records of past atmospheric trace gas isotopic composition from ice cores and firn need...
In winter and spring, ice-coast interactions driven by winds and ocean currents cause sea ice fractures (leads) to form repeatedly along Arctic coastlines. These events are often associated with rapid and expansive changes in sea ice drift and state that are challenging to predict and represent in models. We investigate...