The Arctic Ocean Response to the North Atlantic Oscillation
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Authors
Dickson, R.R.
Osborn, T.J.
Hurrell, J.W.
Meincke, J.
Blindheim, J.
Adlandsvik, B.
Vinje, T.
Alekseev, G.
Maslowski
Subjects
Advisors
Date of Issue
2000-08
Date
Publisher
Language
Abstract
The climatically sensitive zone of the Arctic Ocean lies squarely within the domain of the North Atlantic
oscillation (NAO), one of the most robust recurrent modes of atmospheric behavior. However, the specific
response of the Arctic to annual and longer-period changes in the NAO is not well understood. Here that response
is investigated using a wide range of datasets, but concentrating on the winter season when the forcing is maximal
and on the postwar period, which includes the most comprehensive instrumental record. This period also contains
the largest recorded low-frequency change in NAO activity—from its most persistent and extreme low index
phase in the 1960s to its most persistent and extreme high index phase in the late 1980s/early 1990s. This longperiod
shift between contrasting NAO extrema was accompanied, among other changes, by an intensifying storm
track through the Nordic Seas, a radical increase in the atmospheric moisture flux convergence and winter
precipitation in this sector, an increase in the amount and temperature of the Atlantic water inflow to the Arctic
Ocean via both inflow branches (Barents Sea Throughflow and West Spitsbergen Current), a decrease in the
late-winter extent of sea ice throughout the European subarctic, and (temporarily at least) an increase in the
annual volume flux of ice from the Fram Strait.
Type
Article
Description
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Department
Oceanography
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Format
Citation
Journal of Climate, Volume 13, pp. 2671-2696.
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This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.