Description: Unprecedented quantities of heat are entering the Pacific sector of the Arctic Ocean through Bering Strait, particularly during summer months. Though some heat is lost to the atmosphere during autumn cooling, a significant fraction of the incoming warm, salty water subducts (dives beneath) below a cooler fresher layer of near-surface water, subsequently extending hundreds of kilometers into the Beaufort Gyre. Upward turbulent mixing of these sub-surface pockets of heat is likely accelerating sea ice melt in the region. This Pacific-origin water brings both heat and unique biogeochemical properties, contributing to a changing Arctic ecosystem. However, our ability to understand or forecast the role of this incoming water mass has been hampered by lack of understanding of the physical processes controlling subduction and evolution of this this warm water. Crucially, the processes seen here occur at small horizontal scales not resolved by regional forecast models or climate simulations; new parameterizations must be developed that accurately represent the physics. Here we present novel high resolution observations showing the detailed process of subduction and initial evolution of warm Pacific-origin water in the southern Beaufort Gyre.

Description: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in MacKinnon, J. A., Simmons, H. L., Hargrove, J., Thomson, J., Peacock, T., Alford, M. H., Barton, B., Boury, S., Brenner, S. D., Couto, N., Danielson, S. L., Fine, E. C., Graber, H. C., Guthrie, J., Hopkins, J. E., Jayne, S. R., Jeon, C., Klenz, T., Lee, C. M., Lenn, Y-D., Lucas, A. J., Lund, B., Mahaffey, C., Norman, L., Rainville, L., Smith, M. M., Thomas, L. N., Torres-Valdés, S., & Wood, K. R. A warm jet in a cold ocean. Nature Communications, 12(1), (2021): 2418, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22505-5.

Description: Unprecedented quantities of heat are entering the Pacific sector of the Arctic Ocean through Bering Strait, particularly during summer months. Though some heat is lost to the atmosphere during autumn cooling, a significant fraction of the incoming warm, salty water subducts (dives beneath) below a cooler fresher layer of near-surface water, subsequently extending hundreds of kilometers into the Beaufort Gyre. Upward turbulent mixing of these sub-surface pockets of heat is likely accelerating sea ice melt in the region. This Pacific-origin water brings both heat and unique biogeochemical properties, contributing to a changing Arctic ecosystem. However, our ability to understand or forecast the role of this incoming water mass has been hampered by lack of understanding of the physical processes controlling subduction and evolution of this this warm water. Crucially, the processes seen here occur at small horizontal scales not resolved by regional forecast models or climate simulations; new parameterizations must be developed that accurately represent the physics. Here we present novel high resolution observations showing the detailed process of subduction and initial evolution of warm Pacific-origin water in the southern Beaufort Gyre.

Description: Support for this work was provided by the US Office of Naval Research Stratified Ocean Dynamics of the Arctic program (grant numbers N000141512903, N000141612378, N000141612377, N000141612379, N0001416123450, N000141612360, N000141612349, N000141812007, N000141812475, and N000141912514). Additional support for biogeochemistry sampling was provided by UK (NERC) and Germany (BMBF) through the Changing Arctic Ocean Program’s ARISE (NE/P006035/1, NE/P006000/2), PEANUTS (NE/R01275X/1, NE/R012547/2, and BMBF 03F0804) projects and the UK-France PhD program DGA/Dstl. Float deployments and hydrographic data compilations were supported in part by North Pacific Research Board grants A91-99a and A91-00a. The deployment of autonomous ocean profilers was supported by ONR, NOAA Research, and the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO) under NOAA Cooperative Agreement NA15OAR4320063.

Description: Highlights • Seawater dissolved inorganic carbon and nutrients measured for 1.5 seasonal cycles. • Inventories not in steady state from one winter to the next (e.g. 10% nitrate loss) • Significant fraction of annual production stored in long-lived organic matter pool. • Organic matter could provide mechanism for “continental shelf pump” carbon export. Abstract Continental shelf seas may have a significant role in oceanic uptake and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, through a ‘continental shelf pump’ mechanism. The northwest European continental shelf, in particular the Celtic Sea (50°N 8°W), was the target of extensive biogeochemical sampling from March 2014 to September 2015, as part of the UK Shelf Sea Biogeochemistry research programme (UK-SSB). Here, we use the UK-SSB carbonate chemistry and macronutrient measurements to investigate the biogeochemical seasonality in this temperate, seasonally stratified system. Following the onset of stratification, near-surface biological primary production during spring and summer removed dissolved inorganic carbon and nutrients, and a fraction of the sinking particulate organic matter was subsequently remineralised beneath the thermocline. Water column inventories of these variables throughout 1.5 seasonal cycles, corrected for air-sea CO2 exchange and sedimentary denitrification and anammox, isolated the combined effect of net community production (NCP) and remineralisation on the inorganic macronutrient inventories. Overall inorganic inventory changes suggested that a significant fraction (〉50%) of the annual NCP of around 3 mol-C m–2 yr–1 appeared to be stored within a long-lived organic matter (OM) pool with a lifetime of several months or more. Moreover, transfers into and out of this pool appeared not to be in steady state over the one full seasonal cycle sampled. Accumulation of such a long-lived and potentially C-rich OM pool is suggested to be at least partially responsible for the estimated net air-to-sea CO2 flux of ∼1.3 mol-C m–2 yr–1 at our study site, while providing a mechanism through which a nutrient-conserving continental shelf pump for CO2 could potentially operate in this and other similar regions.