Dynamics and Forcing of Nares Strait from 2003 to 2009: Tidal to Interannual Variability to the West of Greenland

Funds are provided to test the hypothesis that the dynamics of Nares Strait is in a state of transition as the season of landfast ice cover diminishes in duration. In particular, the PIs will address two testable hypotheses: H1. Freshwater flux through the Canadian Archipelago presently transitions annually from a dynamic state characterized by land-fast ice (the winter regime) to a different one characterized by mobile ice (the summer regime). H2. A regime change towards a longer mobile summer ice regime leads to more variable ice and ocean freshwater flux as the waters of Nares Strait become exposed to time-dependent local atmospheric surface forcing in addition to remote forcing by the ambient Arctic Ocean and Baffin Bay. To do so, they propose to analyze a comprehensive 6-year data set from an array of moored ocean current, salinity, temperature, sea level, and subsurface pressure sensors, as well as ice thickness observations. The data originate from an unprecedented, high-risk, but ultimately successful 2003-2009 Canada-US observational program that took place in Nares Strait, a major pathway of Arctic waters into the North Atlantic to the west of Greenland. They propose to describe and explain the temporally and spatially varying regimes of kinematics and dynamics within this energetic channel. As oceanic fields are forced by vertical and horizontal boundary layer physics at the ice-water, air-water, and ice-air interfaces, the program includes synthesis of data from a meteorological modeling, a remotely-sensed ice (MODIS), and an ice modeling (CICE) component.