Meltwater that runs along the east coast of Greenland, hardly enters the open ocean before reaching the western side of the island. That is one of the conclusions NIOZ PhD-candidate Elodie Duyck draws in the thesis she is defending at Utrecht University. In the changing climate, fresh water from Greenland and the Arctic could disrupt the circulation in the Atlantic Ocean. “Understanding where, and how much, of that fresh and light water enters the Atlantic Ocean is critical to predict how the circulation may evolve under climate change”, Duyck says.
Greenland and the Atlantic Ocean Circulation
In the coming decades, climate change will lead to increasing amounts of freshwater from Greenland and the Arctic entering the northern North Atlantic Ocean. These waters are less dense than the seawater around Greenland and may hinder the exchange between the surface and deep ocean that usually takes place in this region. This could lead to a weakening of the so-called Atlantic Meridional Overtuning Circulation (AMOC), the large-scale circulation of the Atlantic Ocean, that brings warm water northward at the surface and returns cold water southward at greater depths, affecting the climate in large parts of the world.
Freshwater Pathways
Waters from Greenland and the Arctic initially flow close to the Greenland coast. The extent to which the fresh water then spreads into the open ocean remains uncertain. Direct measurements of the circulation, done by NIOZ and others in the scientific program ‘Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program’ (OSNAP), show that the Irminger Sea, south-east of Greenland, is particularly important for the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation.
Read more at Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research
Photo Credit: JChristophe_Andre via Pixabay