The Beaufort Gyre System: Flywheel of the Arctic Climate?

This project explores the hypothesis that the state and variability of the Beaufort Gyre (BG) system (ocean, sea ice and atmosphere) are natural indicators of Arctic climate health. The major goal of this project is to understand the structure of the BG system, its regulating mechanisms, and impact on Arctic climate. The project team intends to accomplish this by investigating the composition and variability during the period 2003 - 2008 of the atmospheric, cryospheric and oceanic components of this system based on a specially designed observational program, improved modeling studies, and analyses of improved and reconstructed historical data sets. The project will use several major methods to explore the BG system: in situ observations, satellite remote sensing technology, methods of tracer analyses, numerical modeling, historical data mining and reconstruction procedures, and statistical analyses tools. New technologies will be applied: moored profiler instrumentation, satellite techniques allowing mapping of sea ice thickness and sea surface heights in the ice covered regions, and an easily-deployed Ice-Tethered Profiler (ITP) capable of returning daily high-vertical-resolution measurements of upper ocean temperature and salinity. This project relies extensively on working with other NSF projects, and Canadian collaborators, subcontracting with Russian scientists, and freely obtaining other products from our USA and international collaborators from Germany and UK. The specific scientific objectives are: Determine the circulation of the BG throughout the entire water column, and its variability at synoptic to interannual time scales; Measure time series of sea ice draft and determine statistics of the sea ice thickness (SIT), Determine the statistics of ice drift, ocean currents and sea surface heights (SSH) in the BG; Quantify the vertical and temporal scales of variability in the temperature and salinity fields, especially in the halocline and the Pacific and Atlantic layers where many dramatic changes have occurred during the past decade; Assess the impact of this region on large-scale changes in the circulation and properties of the Arctic Ocean; Use all these measurements to increase dynamical understanding of the BG flywheel system and to encourage improved modeling of this system; Compare the observed variations with concurrent variations in the local ocean/atmosphere environment and with variations in atmospheric circulation indices; Synthesize project results characterizing oceanic, cryospheric and atmospheric systems of the BG in order to describe and understand mechanisms and phenomena, both regulating and being regulated by the BG flywheel; Provide quality controlled documented data sets to the Arctic research community and share results of the project with the wider community through an outreach program.