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Recent state transition of the Arctic Ocean’s Beaufort Gyre

Nature Geoscience volume 16, pages 485–491 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

The anti-cyclonic Beaufort Gyre is the dominant circulation of the Canada Basin and the largest freshwater reservoir in the Arctic Ocean. During the first part of the 2000s, the gyre intensified, expanded and accumulated freshwater. Using an extensive hydrographic dataset from 2003 to 2019, together with updated satellite dynamic ocean topography data, we find that over the past decade the Beaufort Gyre has transitioned to a quasi-stable state in which the increase in sea surface height of the gyre has slowed and the freshwater content has plateaued. In addition, the cold halocline layer, which isolates the warm/salty Atlantic water at depth, has thinned significantly due to less input of cold and salty water stemming from the Pacific Ocean and the Chukchi Sea shelf, together with greater entrainment of lighter water from the eastern Beaufort Sea. This recent transition of the Beaufort Gyre is associated with a southeastward shift in its location as a result of variation in the regional wind forcing. Our results imply that continued thinning of the cold halocline layer could modulate the present stable state, allowing for a freshwater release. This, in turn, could freshen the subpolar North Atlantic, impacting the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.

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Fig. 1: Long-term trends of the BG: 2003–2011 versus 2012–2019.
Fig. 2: Spatial distribution of the trends in the BG region.
Fig. 3: Linear trends of volume within salinity classes in relation to the source water.
Fig. 4: Inferred contributions to the CHL in the BG region.

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Data availability

The historical hydrographic data are obtained from the following sources: (1) Unified Database for Arctic and Subarctic Hydrography (https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.872931); (2) World Ocean Database 2018 (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/world-ocean-database); (3) Arctic Data Center (https://arcticdata.io/catalog/data); (4) Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project (https://www2.whoi.edu/site/beaufortgyre/data/data-overview/); (5) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/data-links); (6) NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center (https://data.eol.ucar.edu/dataset/); (7) University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Marine Science (available at the Arctic Ocean Observing System, http://www.aoos.org); (8) Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Institute of Ocean Sciences (https://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/science/publications/index-eng.htm); (9) JAMSTEC (http://www.godac.jamstec.go.jp/darwin/e/); and (10) Korea Polar Data Center (https://kpdcopen.kopri.re.kr). The dynamic ocean topography data produced by ref. 42 and the updated dynamic ocean topography data from 2011 to 2019 are available at http://www.cpom.ucl.ac.uk/dynamic_topography/. The GRACE data can be accessed via https://sealevel.nasa.gov/data/dataset/?identifier=SLCP_CSR-RL06-Mascons-v02_RL06_v02. The ERA5 reanalysis data can be obtained from the ECMWF (https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.3803). The GLORYS12 reanalysis is available at the Copernicus Marine and Environment Monitoring Service (https://data.marine.copernicus.eu/product/GLOBAL_MULTIYEAR_PHY_001_030/description). The JAMSTEC mooring data at the mouth of the Barrow Canyon from 2003 to 2019 are available at https://www.jamstec.go.jp/iace/e/report/. The monthly time series of the Arctic Oscillation index is obtained from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center (https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.shtml). The bathymetry data used in the study are from the International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean version 3 (ref. 49) (https://www.gebco.net/about_us/committees_and_groups/scrum/ibcao/ibcao_v3.html).

Code availability

The MATLAB scripts used to compute the freshwater content and to calculate the Lagrangian particle trajectories can be accessed upon request to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

Funding for the study was provided by National Science Foundation grant OPP-1733564 and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant NA19OAR4320074 (P.L., R.S.P.); Shanghai Pujiang Program 22PJ1406400 and Shanghai Frontiers Science Center of Polar Science (P.L.); European Space Agency Project ESA/AO/1-9132/17/NL/MP and ESA/AO/1-10061/19/I-EF and Natural Environment Research Council NE/T000546/1 and NE/X004643/1 (M.T.); and Arctic Challenge for Sustainability projects ArCS and ArCSII of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (M.I., T.K.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Oceanography, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Peigen Lin

  2. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, USA

    Peigen Lin & Robert S. Pickart

  3. Department of Earth Sciences, Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, University College London, London, UK

    Harry Heorton & Michel Tsamados

  4. Institute of Arctic Climate and Environment Research, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokosuka, Japan

    Motoyo Itoh & Takashi Kikuchi

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Contributions

P.L. led the data analysis and resulting interpretation, with assistance from all co-authors. P.L. and R.S.P. wrote the manuscript with input from all co-authors. H.H. and M.T. produced the updated dynamic ocean topography data from 2011 to 2019. M.I. and T.K. provided the long-term data from the mooring array at the mouth of Barrow Canyon.

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Correspondence to Peigen Lin.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Climatological mean dynamic ocean topography (DOT) from 2003-2019.

The data for water depths shallower than 100 m are not shown.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Variations of extent versus position of the Beaufort Gyre.

The extent of Beaufort Gyre (BG) is estimated as the area within the isoline of 0.6 × maximum DOT for each year (the result is not sensitive to the fraction used) (black curve). As in Fig. 4a, the position of Beaufort Gyre is represented by the distance of the projected core along the line in Fig. 2c (red curve).

Extended Data Fig. 3 Comparison of GLORYS12 reanalysis velocities versus mooring data.

a, The location of the moorings at the shelfbreak of western Beaufort Sea (BS3, red star) and in the vicinity of Bering Strait (A3, blue star). b, Timeseries of alongstream velocity of GLORYS12 (black curve) versus BS3 mooring (red curve), and GLORYS12 versus A3 mooring (blue curve).

Extended Data Fig. 4 Timeseries of the Arctic Oscillation Index.

The shading denotes the monthly values; the annual averages are the blue symbols/curve, including the standard errors; the 3-year lowpassed timeseries is the red curve. The monthly timeseries is obtained from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. The standard error is the standard deviation divided by square root of the degrees of freedom (=12) for each year.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Data coverage of the composite historical hydrographic dataset.

a, Geographical map of the data distribution, including the location of the Barrow Canyon mooring array (red stars). b, The number of profiles in each year corresponding to the warm months and the monthly distribution.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Vertical structure of water column in the Beaufort Gyre region.

Mean profiles of a, salinity, b, potential temperature (°C), and c, buoyancy frequency (N2, s-2) in the upper 500 m for the time period 2003-2019. The dashed curves denote the standard deviation. The four layers delimited by the red solid lines are (from the surface downward): the surface layer, the warm halocline layer, the cold halocline layer (shaded), and the Atlantic water layer (see Methods for the definitions).

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Lin, P., Pickart, R.S., Heorton, H. et al. Recent state transition of the Arctic Ocean’s Beaufort Gyre. Nat. Geosci. 16, 485–491 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01184-5

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