Open AccessThe long‐term and interannual variability of summer fresh water storage over the eastern Siberian shelf: Implication for climatic change
Author(s) -
Dmitrenko Igor A.,
Kirillov Sergey A.,
Tremblay L. Bruno
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: oceans
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.67
H-Index - 298
eISSN - 2156-2202
pISSN - 0148-0227
DOI - 10.1029/2007jc004304
Subject(s) - hydrography , oceanography , climatology , environmental science , arctic , atmosphere (unit) , geology , discharge , geography , drainage basin , meteorology , cartography
A time series of summer fresh water content anomalies (FWCA) over the Laptev and East Siberian sea shelves was constructed from historical hydrographic records for the period from 1920 to 2005. Results from a multiple regression between FCWA and various atmospheric and oceanic indices show that the fresh water content on the shelves is mainly controlled by atmospheric vorticity on quasi‐decadal timescales. When the vorticity of the atmosphere on the shelves is antycyclonic, approximately 500 km 3 of fresh water migrates from the eastern Siberian shelf to the Arctic Ocean through the northeastern Laptev Sea. When the vorticity of the atmosphere is cyclonic, this fresh water remains on the southern Laptev and East Siberian sea shelves. This FWCA represents approximately 35% of the total fresh water inflow provided by river discharge and local sea‐ice melt, and is about ten times larger than the standard deviation of the Lena River summer long‐term mean discharge. However, the large interannual and spatial variability in the fresh water content of the shelves, as well as the spatial coverage of the hydrographic data, makes it difficult to detect the long‐term tendency of fresh water storage associated with climate change.