Ship-Based Monitoring of the Northern
North Atlantic Ocean by the Shirshov
Institute of Oceanology. The Main Results
Artem Sarafanov, Anastasia Falina, Alexey Sokov,
Vyacheslav Zapotylko and Sergey Gladyshev
Introduction
The Meridional overturning circulation (MOC) in the North Atlantic is one of the
main drivers of the widely known global oceanic “conveyor belt”, an important
element of the Earth’s climate system (e.g., [1]). Warm upper-ocean waters transported northward by the North Atlantic Current release heat to the atmosphere, gain
density due to cooling, and eventually sink in the subpolar North Atlantic and
adjacent Arctic seas thereby generating the return southward flow of colder waters
at depths (Fig. 1) [2, 3]. Temporal variability of the large-scale circulation and
associated heat transport in the subpolar North Atlantic is one of the principal
factors behind the high-latitude climate anomalies in the Northern Hemisphere.
Progress in understanding the causes of the ongoing climate change and forecasting climate variability in the Arctic and over the European part of Russia for the
next decades require reliable observation-based estimates of the variability of the
North Atlantic circulation and the Atlantic–Arctic heat and freshwater fluxes, as
well as elucidation of the underlying mechanisms. In a number of recent studies,
radical changes in the thermohaline regime and large-scale circulation in the
Atlantic Ocean have been suggested to occur under global warming. For example,
the long-term freshening of the subpolar North Atlantic deep waters since the
mid-1960s [9] has been (cautiously) attributed to climate change-related factors [10,
11]. Hypothetically, under global warming, an increased evaporation in the tropics
and increased precipitation at high latitudes, coupled with an intensified melting of
Arctic ice, lead to the upper-ocean freshening in the regions of deep water formation and, hence, to the deep water freshening in the Atlantic Ocean. At the same
time, milder winters along with the upper-ocean freshening lead to a decrease in the
A. Sarafanov ( ✉ ) ⋅ A. Falina ⋅ A. Sokov ⋅ V. Zapotylko ⋅ S. Gladyshev
Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
e-mail: sarafanov@mail.ru
© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
M. G. Velarde et al. (eds.), The Ocean in Motion, Springer Oceanography,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71934-4_25
415
North Atlantic Ocean by the Shirshov
Institute of Oceanology. The Main Results
Artem Sarafanov, Anastasia Falina, Alexey Sokov,
Vyacheslav Zapotylko and Sergey Gladyshev
Introduction
The Meridional overturning circulation (MOC) in the North Atlantic is one of the
main drivers of the widely known global oceanic “conveyor belt”, an important
element of the Earth’s climate system (e.g., [1]). Warm upper-ocean waters transported northward by the North Atlantic Current release heat to the atmosphere, gain
density due to cooling, and eventually sink in the subpolar North Atlantic and
adjacent Arctic seas thereby generating the return southward flow of colder waters
at depths (Fig. 1) [2, 3]. Temporal variability of the large-scale circulation and
associated heat transport in the subpolar North Atlantic is one of the principal
factors behind the high-latitude climate anomalies in the Northern Hemisphere.
Progress in understanding the causes of the ongoing climate change and forecasting climate variability in the Arctic and over the European part of Russia for the
next decades require reliable observation-based estimates of the variability of the
North Atlantic circulation and the Atlantic–Arctic heat and freshwater fluxes, as
well as elucidation of the underlying mechanisms. In a number of recent studies,
radical changes in the thermohaline regime and large-scale circulation in the
Atlantic Ocean have been suggested to occur under global warming. For example,
the long-term freshening of the subpolar North Atlantic deep waters since the
mid-1960s [9] has been (cautiously) attributed to climate change-related factors [10,
11]. Hypothetically, under global warming, an increased evaporation in the tropics
and increased precipitation at high latitudes, coupled with an intensified melting of
Arctic ice, lead to the upper-ocean freshening in the regions of deep water formation and, hence, to the deep water freshening in the Atlantic Ocean. At the same
time, milder winters along with the upper-ocean freshening lead to a decrease in the
A. Sarafanov ( ✉ ) ⋅ A. Falina ⋅ A. Sokov ⋅ V. Zapotylko ⋅ S. Gladyshev
Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
e-mail: sarafanov@mail.ru
© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
M. G. Velarde et al. (eds.), The Ocean in Motion, Springer Oceanography,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71934-4_25
415