Variability and Forcing of Fluxes through Nares Strait and Jones Sound:

A Freshwater Emphasis

•Kelly Falkner, Roger Samelson, Marta Torres, Oregon State University (OSU)

•Andreas Münchow, Kuo Wong, University of Delaware (UDel)

•Humfrey Melling, Fiona McLaughlin, Robie Macdonald, Eddy Carmack, Institute of Ocean Sciences (IOS), Canada

•Tom Agnew, Atmosphere & Environment, Canada•Peter Jones, John N. Smith, Bedford Institute of

Oceanography (BIO), Canada

10% of world’s river water25% of world’s shelves

3.9% ocean area1.2% ocean volume

Challenges:•Magnetic North Pole nearby

•Ice bridges and ice bergs

•Strong tidal currents (~ 1 m/s)

•Small internal Rossby radii

(ocean and atmosphere)

•Ageostrophic winds

(hydraulics, katabatics)

•Ice and water contribute to

freshwater flux

•Canadian & Greenland native

community concerns June 3, 1998AVHRR

Objectives:

Freshwater fluxes from tidal to interannual time scales:

•Barotropic vs. baroclinic contribution to flux?

•Local vs. remotely forced flux?

•Tidally rectified contribution to mean flux?

•Quantify flows

•Quantify tracer distributions

•Develop proxy records

•Diagnose dynamics

•Suggest monitoring array

•Conduct outreach & training

•Moorings (velocity, pressure, salinity, ice draft, tracers)

•Surveys (tracers, hydrography, velocity)

•Remote Sensing (AMSR*, AVHRR)

•Paleo-environmental proxies (bivalves, cores)

•Modeling (sub-mesoscale winds)

•Teachers, students and native participants “on board”

Methods

*EOS Aqua Satellite Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-E 89 GHz, daily coverage, 4x6 km spatial resolution

~40 year’s worth of “tree rings”

water samplers

Humfrey Melling’sMooring Program

Torsionally rigid ADCP mooring design

Melling

Project Time Table

•Jan. 1, 2003:

•summer 2003:

•spring 2005:

•summer 2006:

•spring 2007:

•Dec. 31, 2007:

NSF funding starts

Mooring deployment from USCGC Healy

Mooring recovery and re-deployment through ice

Survey from CCGS Louis St. Laurent (?)

Mooring recovery through ice (3.5 yr record)

NSF funding stops

Main Section:

Ellesmere Greenland

~3Ld

•Ld is the internal Rossby radius of deformation

•Measure flux with moored 75 kHz ADCPs and CT/CTD strings that resolve Ld

0-m

-500-m

+500-m

Gaps from our perspective

Lack of in-channel meteorological observations

Jones Sound program terminating 2004

Lancaster Sound program insufficient

Ice-ocean-atm dynamical modeling