Collaborative Research: Quantifying the Spatial/Temporal Variability of the Arctic Cold Halocline and Ice-Ocean Interaction

1995年，北极东部上层海洋的特征发生了重大变化。这种变化是通过被称为冷盐跃层（CHL）的近地表层的损失表现出来的。没有CHL，北极的水柱看起来和行为就像南极的水柱。当地的影响包括可能启动相当大的冬季海洋热通量（15-20 W/m 2）和冬季冰增长减少70-80%，相对于前几年的CHL是本。目前还不知道CHL已经或将继续缺席多久，尽管它似乎在1999年夏天开始恢复。该项目将检查整个北极地区的CTD站，以量化CHL的强度以及海洋-冰相互作用的其他季节平均特征（例如，海洋热通量、整体稳定性、冰增长潜力的减少）。通过分析上层海洋综合属性分布，然后生成描述相关物理量的鲁棒整体属性参数，实现了量化。该方法最初是为分析南极冰-海洋相互作用而设计的，但最近表明，它同样适用于北极。一旦应用于北极数据，参数将被平均，以提供各种属性的气候。这些气候的空间分布将与北极的物理和动力特性进行比较，以确定海洋-冰相互作用的气候性质与物理/动力环境之间的关系。然后将在零星数据覆盖范围允许的范围内应用最佳插值方法，以确定各种综合性质如何随时间和空间发生变化。这将提供海洋-冰相互作用的空间/时间分布，用于评估CHL和其他海洋-冰相互作用发生变化的方式。将检查的时间变化的周期，趋势，或其他连贯的模式，最近在文献中提出的证据。分析海洋数据是这项工作的理想选择，因为介质的时间尺度很长，即使在（空间和时间）抽样很少的区域，也可能揭示可疑变化的证据。

There has been a significant change in the upper ocean characteristics of the eastern Arctic in 1995. The change was manifested through the loss of a near-surface layer known as the cold halocline layer (CHL). Without the CHL, the Arctic water column looks and behaves like the Antarctic water column. The local impact involves the likely initiation of considerable winter ocean heat fluxes (15-20 W/m 2 ) and reduction of winter ice growth by 70-80% relative to previous years in which the CHL was present. It is not known how long the CHL did, or will, remain absent, though it appears to begun recovery by summer 1999. This project will examine CTD stations throughout the Arctic region in order to quantify the strength of the CHL as well as other seasonally-averaged characteristics of the ocean-ice interaction (e.g., ocean heat flux, bulk stability, reduction in ice growth potential). The quantification is achieved through analysis of upper ocean integrated property distributions, and then generating robust bulk property parameters describing relevant physical quantities. The methodology was originally designed for analysis of Antarctic ice-ocean interaction, but as recently shown, is equally applicable to the Arctic. Once applied to the Arctic data, the parameters will be averaged to provide climatologies for the various properties. The spatial distribution of these climatologies will be compared to physical and dynamical properties of the Arctic in an attempt to determine the relationship between the climatological nature of the ocean-ice interaction and the physical/dynamical setting. Methods of optimal interpolation will then be applied, to the extent allowed by the sporadic data coverage, in an effort to determine how the various integrated properties have changed through space and time. This will provide spatial/temporal distributions of the ocean-ice interaction that will be used to evaluate the manner in which the CHL and other ocean-ice interactions have changed. The temporal variations will be examined for evidence of cycles, trends, or other coherent patterns, as have been suggested recently in the literature. Analysis of ocean data is ideal for this undertaking given the long time scales of the medium which may reveal evidence of the suspected changes even in sparsely sampled (in space and time) regions.