Inter-annual Bering Strait Volume Transport in the Warmer Water Months from Satellite Altimeter Data, 1993 - 2020

Abstract: The work done on this project is described in the Final Report for NSF Award 1740756 and the associated manuscript (see the file Sangmanee_ClarkeJPOmanuscript.pdf submitted to the Arctic Data Center) “Interannual Variability and Trend of the Bering Strait Throughflow Gleaned from Satellite Altimeters” that has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Physical Oceanography. All data in this project are seasonal anomalies, i.e., the mean seasonal value has been subtracted from the data to assess the year-to-year variability. Data related to this project are listed in the following 9 CSV files. The data include:“01_Seasonal_BSt_SSH.csv”, the anomalous July-August-September (JAS), August-September-October (ASO), September-October-November(SON), and July-August-September-October (JASO) Seasonal Satellite Sea Surface Heights in 17 Clusters at the Northern End of Bering Strait. “02_Seasonal_BSt_Transport.csv”, the anomalous volume transports through the Bering Strait 50 meter(m)-depth channel calculated from the 10 western-most clusters. The next 7 Sea Surface Height (SSH) clusters in shallower water east of the 50m-deep Bering Strait channel had negligible transport. Near the coast we were able to use the 17th SSH cluster, interpolated Alaskan coastal sea level between Nome and Red Dog Dock and geostrophic balance to estimate the JAS, ASO, SON, and JASO anomalous transport of the fresher water Alaskan Coastal Current (ACC) which hugs the coast. An explanation of how we did this is in section 3d of Sangmanee_ClarkeJPOmanuscript.pdf, and the relevant data for the calculation and the transports are in the data set titled
“03_Seasonal_ACC_Transport.csv”. In order to understand the physical cause of the transport through the strait, Arrested Topographic Wave (ATW) theoretical calculations of anomalous JAS, ASO, SON and JASO wind-driven sea level at stations on the Russian Arctic shelf and on the Bering Sea shelf were done as described respectively in sections 6b and section 7 of Sangmanee_ClarkeJPOmanuscript.pdf. The observational and theoretical sea levels for the seasons JAS, ASO, SON and JASO for the Russian Arctic shelf were reported as required in four data sets, one each for the observed sea levels for the eastern (“04_01_Observed_Russian_SLH_E”) and western hemisphere (05_01_Observed_Russian_SLH_W) as well as theoretical sea levels for the eastern ("04_02_Theoretical_Russian_SLH_E") and western hemisphere (“05_02_Theoretical_Russian_SSH_W.csv”). Observed data needed for the JAS, ASO, SON and JASO Bering Sea calculations are given in "06_01_Observed_Alaskan_SSH" and the theoretical results themselves are given in "06_01_Observed_Alaskan_SSH" . All latitude and longitude coordinates used in the “boxes” below are in degrees with degrees latitude North and degrees longitude East being positive.