Ventilation of the Western Arctic Halocline via Boundary Processes

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Observations indicate that the western Arctic halocline is ventilated from (replenished by) waters that originate on the shelf. This ventilation process is of fundamental importance to the physical, biological, and chemical systems in the Arctic Ocean. Little is known about where this ventilation takes place in the western Arctic, what controls its magnitude, how it occurs, or how it might vary in a changing climate. Funds are provided to better understand this ventilation process in the southern Canada Basin using a regional, high resolution ocean-ice model. The model calculations will allow for a detailed examination of the boundary - interior exchange, relate the onshore flux to specific dynamical processes and regions of the Chukchi and southern Beaufort Seas, and provide a basis for testing of theoretical constraints on this exchange. The model design, evaluation, and analysis will be closely coupled to the data being collected as part of the western Arctic Shelf-Basin Interactions program. This will provide a valuable test of the model fields, as well as motivate the model analysis to address aspects of the ventilation process that cannot be resolved with the data alone.