Meetings: Documents

Estimation of Freshwater Fluxes from the Arctic Ocean using SMAP and CFS Salinity
[14-Dec-2018] Nichols, R.E. and Bulusu, S.
Presented at the 2018 AGU Fall Meeting
In recent decades we have seen major changes in Arctic Ocean circulation, salinity, and temperature and associated declines in sea ice coverage and mass balance. There is evidence of connections of these changes with climate indices, and the changes arguably affect climate by changing the radiative heat balance at high latitude, impacting the strength of the global overturning circulation. The Arctic Ocean is a mixing basin for freshwater and an ice factory. Since 1990 we have seen major changes in the Arctic Ocean. Given the possible role of Arctic Ocean outflow in controlling global overturning circulation, there have been extensive efforts to monitor fluxes between the sub-Arctic seas and the Arctic Ocean in recent years. The change of climate has become more obvious in the last few decades. Due to limited in situ monitoring of sea surface salinity (SSS), particularly, over the Arctic region, its temporal and spatial scale distribution was not well known until recent satellite measurements resolved this limitation. This Arctic ice melt has led to an influx of freshwater into the Arctic environment, a process that can be observed in SSS. Comparisons of model and observed SSS will help assess the realism of the simulated Arctic circulation, as well as the freshening of the Arctic waters due to ice melt. In this study we will use salinity derived from NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP), and long-term coupled model simulations using NOAA/NCEP Climate Forecast System (CFSv2).