NASA Finds Russian Runoff Freshening Canadian Arctic

  • Released Wednesday, January 4, 2012
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A new NASA and University of Washington study allays concerns that melting Arctic sea ice could be increasing the amount of freshwater in the Arctic enough to have an impact on the global "ocean conveyor belt" that redistributes heat around our planet. Read the full press release here: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20120104.html

The transpolar drift (purple arrows) is a dominant circulation feature in the Arctic Ocean that carries freshwater runoff (red arrows) from rivers in Russia across the North Pole and south towards Greenland.
Under changing atmospheric conditions, emergent circulation patterns (blue arrows) drive freshwater runoff east towards Canada, resulting in freshening of Arctic water in the Canada Basin.

For More Information

See http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20120104.html

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Wednesday, January 4, 2012.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:53 PM EDT.