Collaborative Research: Impacts of the Changing Seasonality of Wind-driven Mixing on the Arctic System

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This award will support a study that addresses the hypothesis that the expanding extent and duration of seasonal open water in the Arctic has the potential to reshape the properties and stratification of the upper ocean, dramatically altering mixed layer depths, strengthening the internal wave field by at least an order of magnitude, thereby enhancing turbulent mixing in the halocline and pycnocline. If sufficiently strong, this enhanced mixing could bring nutrients and heat from the Pacific Ocean into the Arctic Ocean surface and photic zone, with implications for ecosystems, surface fluxes and feedbacks to sea-ice formation. This is an interdisciplinary study that will analyse data from past and current research programs, and use theory and numerical modeling to address four major questions:1. Given observed sea-ice extent and winds, what are the potential and observed impacts on wind-driven mixed layer depth within the Arctic?2. What is the observed and potential change in the internal wave field of the Arctic Ocean?3. What is the spatial and temporal variation of the increased mixing rates implied by a more energetic wave field?4. What are the impacts of this enhanced mixing on Arctic ecosystem and heat/freshwater balances?This study has numerous 'Broader Impacts' for a variety of audiences. Scientifically, this study of the system-wide impacts of Arctic Ocean mixing aims to quantify anticipated changes, and make the initial foray into physical and ecosystem implications. These are the basis of changes with implications up the food-chain through to subsistence hunters, and are also considerations for the environmental impacts of oil/gas and mineral exploration. Results of the study will also be used in inter-disciplinary Arctic science courses at the University of Washington, and bring the Arctic and Arctic Change to schools and the general public via a special ocean mixing exhibit 'The Ocean in Your Kitchen' at the annual Polar Science Weekend at the Pacific Science Center, Seattle's main science museum. The investigators will also reach new groups by organizing presentations and activities with the Young Professional International Network in Seattle and Science Cafés in Massachusetts and Maine.