Study shows warm water sliding into Beaufort Sea May 5th 10:19 pm |
Alice Bailey, For the Arctic Sounder
A new study provides the first high-resolution observations of warm, northbound water sliding beneath the surface of the cold Beaufort Sea.
The research, published in Nature Communications, adds to evidence that polar ice may be melting faster than models predict. The rate of accelerating sea ice melt in the Arctic has been hard to predict accurately, in part because of all of the complex local feedbacks between ice, ocean and atmosphere; this work showcases the large role in warming that ocean water plays as part of those feedbacks, said Jennifer MacKinnon, a physical oceanographer at the University of California San Diego s Scripps Institute of Oceanography and lead author of the paper.
The ol fishing line that you shoulda been here yesterday may be about to change: Warming Arctic could lead to a lucrative fishery, depending on what policymakers do.
By Daniel Grossman | Thursday, February 25, 2021
Will fishing boats currently having little interest in now-fishless Arctic ‘high-seas’ find valuable fish there as its waters warm? How might the international community anticipate and respond?
Commercial fishing doesn’t bother much with the Arctic Ocean. Ice covers a third of it even in the summer. It’s remote and has few lucrative fish. Horrendous storms and icebergs lurk. But the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average. The ocean’s cap of sea ice, just 40 years ago as big as Australia, is shrinking fast.