TY - JOUR
T1 - Ocean circulation causes the largest freshening event for 120 years in eastern subpolar North Atlantic
AU - Holliday, N. Penny
AU - Bersch, Manfred
AU - Berx, Barbara
AU - Chafik, Léon
AU - Cunningham, Stuart
AU - Florindo-López, Cristian
AU - Hátún, Hjálmar
AU - Johns, William
AU - Josey, Simon A.
AU - Larsen, Karin Margretha H.
AU - Mulet, Sandrine
AU - Oltmanns, Marilena
AU - Reverdin, Gilles
AU - Rossby, Tom
AU - Thierry, Virginie
AU - Valdimarsson, Hedinn
AU - Yashayaev, Igor
N1 - Funding Information:
The idea for this analysis emerged from the Iceland-Faroe-Scotland-Ridge Exchanges Workshop organised by Henrik Søiland, Jan Even Nilsen, Tom Rossby, Bee Berx and Karin Margretha H. Larsen, and held at the Bjerknes Centre, University of Bergen in September 2017. N.P.H. was supported by UK NERC National Capability programmes ACSIS (NE/N018044/1), the Extended Ellett Line and CLASS (NE/R015953/1), and NERC Large Grant UK OSNAP (NE/K010875/1). N.P.H., B.B., H.H., M.O. and K.M.H.L. are supported by the Blue-Action project (European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, grant: 727852). G.R. was supported by CNRS for his contribution to SNO SSS (http://www.legos.obs-mip.fr/observations/sss/datadelivery/products). W.J. was supported through NSF OSNAP grants OCE1259398 and OCE1756231. L.C. acknowledges support through the Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA; Dnr 133/17) and the FiNNESS project. M.O. was supported by the AtlantOS project (European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, grant: 633211) and the project RACE-Synthesis—Regional Atlantic Circulation and global Change (03F0824C) from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). S.M. has been funded by the European Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service. V.T. was supported by Ifremer, and the GEOVIDE (ANR-13-BS06-0014-02) and BOCATS (CTM2013-41048-P) project co-funded by the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional 2014–2020 (FEDER).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).
PY - 2020/12/1
Y1 - 2020/12/1
N2 - The Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation is important to the climate system because it carries heat and carbon northward, and from the surface to the deep ocean. The high salinity of the subpolar North Atlantic is a prerequisite for overturning circulation, and strong freshening could herald a slowdown. We show that the eastern subpolar North Atlantic underwent extreme freshening during 2012 to 2016, with a magnitude never seen before in 120 years of measurements. The cause was unusual winter wind patterns driving major changes in ocean circulation, including slowing of the North Atlantic Current and diversion of Arctic freshwater from the western boundary into the eastern basins. We find that wind-driven routing of Arctic-origin freshwater intimately links conditions on the North West Atlantic shelf and slope region with the eastern subpolar basins. This reveals the importance of atmospheric forcing of intra-basin circulation in determining the salinity of the subpolar North Atlantic.
AB - The Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation is important to the climate system because it carries heat and carbon northward, and from the surface to the deep ocean. The high salinity of the subpolar North Atlantic is a prerequisite for overturning circulation, and strong freshening could herald a slowdown. We show that the eastern subpolar North Atlantic underwent extreme freshening during 2012 to 2016, with a magnitude never seen before in 120 years of measurements. The cause was unusual winter wind patterns driving major changes in ocean circulation, including slowing of the North Atlantic Current and diversion of Arctic freshwater from the western boundary into the eastern basins. We find that wind-driven routing of Arctic-origin freshwater intimately links conditions on the North West Atlantic shelf and slope region with the eastern subpolar basins. This reveals the importance of atmospheric forcing of intra-basin circulation in determining the salinity of the subpolar North Atlantic.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-020-14474-y
DO - 10.1038/s41467-020-14474-y
M3 - Article
C2 - 31996687
AN - SCOPUS:85078688762
VL - 11
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
SN - 2041-1723
IS - 1
M1 - 585
ER -