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Scientists studying one of the fastest-warming regions of the global ocean say changes in this region are so sudden and huge that it will effectively soon be another part of the Atlantic Ocean, rather than a characteristically icy Arctic Ocean .
The Call Of The Arctic: An Icy Expedition
The northern Barents Sea, north of Scandinavia and east of the remote Svalbard archipelago, has warmed extremely rapidly – by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) since the year 2000 – and stands out even in the fastest warming part of the globe, the Arctic.
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“We call it the Arctic warming hotspot,” says Sigrid Lind, a researcher at the Institute of Marine Research in Tromsø, Norway.
Now Ms. Lind and her colleagues have shown, based on temperature and salinity measurements taken on summer research cruises, that this warming is accompanied by a marked change in character, as the Atlantic Ocean effectively takes over the region and transforms it into a very different entity.
Their findings were published this week in Nature Climate Change by Ms Lind and two colleagues at the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research and the University of Bergen. And they emphasize that the divide between the Atlantic and the Arctic is not only a geographical one – it is of a physical nature.
While the southern Barents is milder, the northern Barents has – until recently – had all the characteristics of an arctic sea. It contained liquid sea ice that, when it melted, helped provide an icy, freshwater cap on top of the ocean. This prevented internal heat from escaping to the atmosphere and also kept the ocean “stratified” – cold, fresher water at the surface and warmer, Atlantic-origin water below.
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This situation, which exists in large parts of the Arctic, was reinforced by the fact that fresh water is less dense than salt water, which preserves the stratification.
But that is changing. Less sea ice flows down through the northern Barents Sea from higher Arctic latitudes, the research shows.
Flooding destroyed eight bridges and destroyed crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad Valley of northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been retreating, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating floods when their banks break. Climate change may also increase rainfall in some areas while bringing drought to others.
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In the middle of a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft looks for a dry place to seek shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to leave tens of millions of people homeless by 2050.
The Sindh province of Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. “Because of climate change, we either have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crops and feed our animals,” says the photographer. “The picture clearly shows that the extreme drought creates wide cracks in the clay. Crops are very difficult to grow.”
Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland that she said had grown rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers in Iceland has reduced by 12 percent.
A river once flowed along the depression in the arid soil of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared under rising temperatures.
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A shepherd moves his flock while looking for greener pastures near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been hit hard by heat waves and drought, making locals nervous about further predicted temperature rises.
A factory in China is surrounded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organization has warned that such pollution, much of which comes from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a “public health emergency”.
Water levels in reservoirs, such as this one in Gers, France, have become dangerously low in drought-stricken areas around the world, forcing authorities to impose water restrictions.
In fact, the lack of sea ice in the northern Barents Sea has been a regular feature on charts lately – at this very moment, a huge stretch of sea in this area, which has traditionally been ice-covered, is currently open.
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And when that happens, the deeper Atlantic waters mix higher and higher towards the surface, which not only warms the oceans, but also makes them saltier. The result, the study says, has been a “dramatic shift in water column structure in recent years.” Arctic surface water, with a temperature below freezing, is “now almost completely gone.”
The triggering event for these changes, the new study finds, is that liquid ice is no longer delivered as regularly to the Barents Sea region from higher Arctic climes.
Arctic sea ice breaks up and becomes more mobile in the warmer months of the year, but less has flowed into the Barents Sea and melted, and it has again begun to break the layering roof in the sea, as the Barents Sea no longer contains enough fresh water to sustain it.
“Unless freshwater inflows were to recover, the entire region may soon have a warm and well-mixed water column structure and become part of the Atlantic domain, a historically rare moment where we would witness a large body of water being completely transformed from Arctic to Atlantic type, ” concludes the study.
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The change may lead to an expansion of the highly productive Barents Sea cod fishery northwards – but this will also come at the expense of an Arctic marine ecosystem that will probably have to retreat towards the Pole.
Jennifer Francis, an Arctic expert at Rutgers University, said ice loss over the Barents Sea and nearby Kara Sea can disrupt the atmospheric jet stream, which in turn leads to extreme weather over Eurasia, especially in winter.
Here’s how it works, according to Ms. Francis: The warmer atmosphere over the ice-free sea can strengthen a region of atmospheric high pressure that tends to form around the Ural Mountains, south of these bodies of water. This then leads to an extension of the stratospheric jet stream, which dives further south as it passes the high pressure area and forms a low pressure area.
The result of this elongated jet, writes Ms. Francis, is “persistent cold spells over East Asia and a disrupted stratospheric polar vortex, which effectively extends the original influence of ice loss into late winter. We saw this happen sparingly last winter.”
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There may be more of that in the future, because the researchers say that changes in the northern Barents Sea may already have gone too far to reverse.
“What we show is that the sea ice is likely to move completely out of the Barents Sea and not come back,” says Ms Lind.
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Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be logged in automatically. Refresh your browser to be logged in. The Arctic Ocean may be the world’s smallest, but it is becoming a critical area as climate change warms it faster than anywhere else on Earth.
Arctic Ocean Facts You Might Not Know
The Arctic Ocean is the northernmost body of water on Earth. It encircles the Arctic and flows beneath it. Most of the Arctic Ocean is covered in ice year-round – although that is starting to change as temperatures rise. Pale and stark on the surface, the Arctic Ocean is home to an amazing array of life.
Although it is the world’s smallest ocean – spanning 6.1 million square kilometers – the Arctic is now receiving unprecedented international attention. Scientists are racing to understand how warming temperatures will change the waters of the Arctic Ocean – and by extension the rest of the climate – and world leaders are racing to control newly opened waters.
The Arctic Ocean is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth and is feeling the onslaught of climate change.
The United States, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Russia all have territories that reach into the Arctic Ocean. About four million people live in the Arctic region, many of them indigenous groups that have thrived there for millennia. To survive in the harsh climate, many of the region’s people depend on the bounty of the sea to sustain their livelihoods. This includes fishing, sealing, whaling and other activities.
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As the impermeable sea ice becomes less stable, Northern Hemisphere countries have begun to take greater interest in the Arctic as a route for shipping routes, military presence and commercial opportunities, particularly oil and gas exploration.
Much of the Arctic Ocean’s complex life can only be seen by underwater scientists who dive through holes in thick sea ice. Much of the sea here is dark, blocked from sunlight by ice caps, but photographers have been diving with lights to reveal Arctic underwater life. (See the pictures here.)
Scientists note that studying life in the Arctic Ocean can be difficult because the area is difficult to access. Much is still unknown about the Arctic marine food web.
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