Satellites of the European Space Agency (ESA) have revealed the existence of a largeagglomeration of fresh water in the Arctic Ocean that generates a bulging of the sea surface. If the wind direction changed, the water would pour into the Atlantic Ocean, cooling Europe.
Researchers from the Polar Center for Observation and Modeling (CPOM), University College London and the UK National Oceanographic Center have relied on data from ESA satellitesERS-2YEnvisat to measure sea level in the Western Arctic between 1995 and 2010. One of the conclusions is that since 2002 the height of the sea level in the studied area has risen by 15 centimeters, and the volume of fresh water has increased by about 8000 cubic kilometers – about 10% of all fresh water in the Arctic Ocean. The results were published yesterday in the online version of the magazineNature Geoscience.
According to the study, the accumulation of water, and the consequent bulging of the sea surface, could be a consequence of theacceleration of a large ocean circulation system called the Beaufort Gyre. The acceleration would be due to strong Arctic winds. Scientists fear that a change in wind direction will cause fresh water to spill into the rest of the Arctic Ocean, even reaching the North Atlantic. If that happened, it could be seenGulf Stream slowed, which makes Europe enjoy relatively mild temperatures, compared to other areas of similar latitudes. And that would cause a drop in temperatures on the European continent.
“When we looked at our data on an annual scale, we realized that changes in sea level were not directly related to wind behavior, and we wondered why,” says Katharine Giles, CPOM researcher and lead author of the work. . “One possibility is that the sea ice acts as a barrier between the atmosphere and the ocean.” The next step will be to try to confirm this idea by investigating in more detail how changes in sea ice cover affect the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean.
