Earth Sciences

Katharine Giles and colleagues have discovered that the freshwater stored in the western Arctic Ocean has increased by 8000 km3 between the 1990s and 2010 by looking at changes in the sea surface height measured by the European Space Agency Satellites ERS-2 and Envisat. 

These findings are reported in the Nature Geoscience publication (January 2012) entitled "Western Arctic Ocean freshwater storage increased by wind-driven spin-up of the Beaufort Gyre".

Lead author, Katharine Giles says “We were surprised to find that our results also suggested that something else was going on. When we looked at our data on a year-to-year basis we noticed that the changes in the sea surface height did not always follow what the wind was doing so we thought about reasons as to why this might happen. One idea is that sea ice forms a barrier between the atmosphere and the ocean. So, as the sea-ice cover changes, the effect of the wind on the ocean might also change.”

Links to more information: BBC news article; UCL Lunch Hour Lecture -YouTube channel; CPOM News