Recent drastic reduction of the older perennial sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has resulted in a vast expansion of younger and saltier seasonal sea ice. This increase in the salinity of the overall ice cover could impact tropospheric chemical processes. Springtime perennial ice extent in 2008 and 2009 broke the half-century record minimum in 2007 by about one million km2. In both years seasonal ice was dominant across the Beaufort Sea extending to the Amundsen Gulf, where significant field and satellite observations of sea ice, temperature, and atmospheric chemicals have been made. Measurements at the site of the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Amundsen ice breaker in the Amundsen Gulf showed events of increased bromine monoxide (BrO), coupled with decreases of ozone (O3) and gaseous elemental mercury (GEM), during cold periods in March 2008. The timing of the main event of BrO, O3, and GEM changes was found to be consistent with BrO observed by satellites over an extensive area around the site. Furthermore, satellite sensors detected a doubling of atmospheric BrO in a vortex associated with a spiral rising air pattern. In spring 2009, excessive and widespread bromine explosions occurred in the same region while the regional air temperature was low and the extent of perennial ice was significantly reduced compared to the case in 2008. Using satellite observations together with a Rising-Air-Parcel model, we discover a topographic control on BrO distribution such that the Alaskan North Slope and the Canadian Shield region were exposed to elevated BrO, whereas the surrounding mountains isolated the Alaskan interior from bromine intrusion.

Freshening in the Canada basin of the Arctic Ocean began in the 1990s and continued to at least the end of 2008. By then, the Arctic Ocean might have gained four times as much fresh water as comprised the Great Salinity Anomaly of the 1970s, raising the spectre of slowing global ocean circulation. Freshening has been attributed to increased sea ice melting and contributions from runoff, but a leading explanation has been a strengthening of the Beaufort High — a characteristic peak in sea level atmospheric pressure — which tends to accelerate an anticyclonic (clockwise) wind pattern causing convergence of fresh surface water. Limited observations have made this explanation difficult to verify, and observations of increasing freshwater content under a weakened Beaufort High suggest that other factors must be affecting freshwater content.

Here we use observations to show that during a time of record reductions in ice extent from 2005 to 2008, the dominant freshwater content changes were an increase in the Canada basin balanced by a decrease in the Eurasian basin. Observations are drawn from satellite data (sea surface height and ocean-bottom pressure) and in situ data. The freshwater changes were due to a cyclonic (anticlockwise) shift in the ocean pathway of Eurasian runoff forced by strengthening of the west-to-east Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation characterized by an increased Arctic Oscillation index. Our results confirm that runoff is an important influence on the Arctic Ocean and establish that the spatial and temporal manifestations of the runoff pathways are modulated by the Arctic Oscillation, rather than the strength of the wind-driven Beaufort Gyre circulation.

Extensive dirty ice patches with up to 7 kg m^-2 sediment concentrations in layers of up to 10 cm thickness were encountered in 2005 and 2007 in numerous areas across the central Arctic. The Fe grain fingerprint determination of sources for these sampled dirty ice floes indicated both Russian and Canadian sources, with the latter dominating. The presence of benthic shells and sea weeds along with thick layers (2-10 cm) of sediment covering 5-10 m² indicates an anchor ice entrainment origin as opposed to suspension freezing for some of these floes. The anchor ice origin might explain the dominance of Canadian sources where only narrow flaw leads occur that would not favor suspension freezing as an entrainment process. Expandable clays, commonly used as an indicator of a Kara Sea origin for dirty sea ice, are present in moderately high percentages (>20%) in many circum-Arctic source areas, including the Arctic coasts of North America.

Some differences between the Russian and the North American coastal areas are found in clay mineral abundance, primarily the much higher abundance of chlorite in North America and the northern Barents Sea as opposed to the rest of the Russian Arctic. However, sea ice clay mineralogy matched many source areas, making it difficult to use as a provenance tool by itself. The bulk mineralogy (clay and non-clay) does not match specific sources possibly due to reworking of the sediment in dirty floes through summer melting or the failure to characterize all possible source areas.

Satellite and surface observations show that half of the extent of perennial sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has been lost in the decade of 2000s. Perennial sea ice is the class of old and thick ice important for the stability of the Arctic environment. Perennial ice extent set the record low in 2008 and has remained low as seen in updated satellite scatterometer data and surface drifting buoy measurements in 2011. The drastic decline of Arctic sea ice is far exceeding the worst-case projections from climate models of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. The important role of the Polar Express phenomenon has been identified, indicating dynamic and thermodynamic effects are combined to expedite the loss of perennial sea ice. Consequently, major impacts include decreases in Arctic surface albedo, increases in absorbed insolation, facilitation of sea-route opening, and changes in tropospheric chemical processes such as bromine explosion, ozone depletion, and mercury deposition that impact the biosphere.

Based on relationships established in previous studies, the extreme negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation (AO) that characterized winter of 2009/2010 should have favored retention of Arctic sea ice through the 2010 summer melt season. The September 2010 sea ice extent nevertheless ended up as third lowest in the satellite record, behind 2007 and barely above 2008, reinforcing the long-term downward trend. This reflects pronounced differences in atmospheric circulation during winter of 2009/2010 compared to the mean anomaly pattern based on past negative AO winters, low ice volume at the start of the melt season, and summer melt of much of the multiyear ice that had been transported into the warm southerly reaches of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

Here we report the first optical, sensor-based profiles of nitrate from the central Makarov and Amundsen and southern Canada basins of the Arctic Ocean. These profiles were obtained as part of the International Polar Year program during spring 2007 and 2008 field seasons of the North Pole Environmental Observatory (NPEO) and Beaufort Gyre Exploration Program (BGEP). These nitrate data were combined with in-situ, sensor-based profiles of dissolved oxygen to derive the first high-resolution vertical NO profiles to be reported for the Arctic Ocean.

The focus of this paper is on the halocline layer that insulates sea ice from Atlantic water heat and is an important source of nutrients for marine ecosystems within and downstream of the Arctic. Previous reports based on bottle data have identified a distinct lower halocline layer associated with an NO minimum at about S=34.2 that was proposed to be formed initially in the Nansen Basin and then advected downstream. Greater resolution afforded by our data reveal an even more pronounced NO minimum within the upper, cold halocline of the Makarov Basin. Thus a distinct lower salinity source ventilated the Makarov and not the Amundsen Basin. In addition, a larger Eurasian River water influence overlies this halocline source in the Makarov. Observations in the southern Canada Basin corroborate previous studies confirming multiple lower halocline influences including diapycnal mixing between Pacific winter waters and Atlantic-derived lower halocline waters, ventilation via brine formation induced in persistent openings in the ice, and cold, O₂-rich lower halocline waters originating in the Eurasian Basin. These findings demonstrate that continuous sensing of chemical properties promises to significantly advance understanding of the maintenance and circulation of the halocline.

We present our best estimate of the thickness and volume of the Arctic Ocean ice cover from 10 Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) campaigns that span a 5-year period between 2003 and 2008. Derived ice drafts are consistently within 0.5 m of those from a submarine cruise in mid-November of 2005 and 4 years of ice draft profiles from moorings in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Along with a more than 42% decrease in multiyear (MY) ice coverage since 2005, there was a remarkable thinning of ~0.6 m in MY ice thickness over 4 years. In contrast, the average thickness of the seasonal ice in midwinter (~2 m), which covered more than two-thirds of the Arctic Ocean in 2007, exhibited a negligible trend. Average winter sea ice volume over the period, weighted by a loss of ~3000 km³ between 2007 and 2008, was ~14,000 km³. The total MY ice volume in the winter has experienced a net loss of 6300 km³ (>40%) in the 4 years since 2005, while the first-year ice cover gained volume owing to increased overall area coverage. The overall decline in volume and thickness are explained almost entirely by changes in the MY ice cover. Combined with a large decline in MY ice coverage over this short record, there is a reversal in the volumetric and areal contributions of the two ice types to the total volume and area of the Arctic Ocean ice cover. Seasonal ice, having surpassed that of MY ice in winter area coverage and volume, became the dominant ice type. It seems that the near-zero replenishment of the MY ice cover after the summers of 2005 and 2007, an imbalance in the cycle of replenishment and ice export, has played a significant role in the loss of Arctic sea ice volume over the ICESat record.

The unprecedented retreat of first-year ice during summer 2007 was enhanced by strong poleward drift over the western Arctic induced by anomalously high sea-level pressure (SLP) over the Beaufort Sea that persisted throughout much of the summer. Comparison of the tracks of drifting buoys with monthly mean SLP charts shows a substantial Ekman drift. By means of linear regression analysis it is shown that Ekman drift during summer has played an important role in regulating annual minimum Arctic sea-ice extent in prior years as well. In combination, the preconditioning by events in prior years, as represented by an index of May multi-year ice, and current atmospheric conditions, as represented by an index of July–August–September SLP anomalies over the Arctic basin account for ~60% of the year-to-year variance of September sea-ice extent since 1979.

Unusual Beaufort Sea ice conditions, in summers 2006 and 2007, are documented. Comparison of NASA team ice concentration estimates against in-situ observations show that NASA team concentrations, were 30% lower than in situ observations for flooded ice, and 10% lower for refrozen ice. We show that the drift of sea ice into the Beaufort and divergence precondition recent summer ice conditions. Intrusions of first year ice from the Chukchi Sea to the Northern Beaufort, and recent reduction in size of the Beaufort Gyre has led to reduced replenishment of older, multi-year ice in the western Beaufort, resulting in a younger, thinner ice pack in most of the Beaufort. However, during the Winter of 2006, an anomalous southward, then westward push of MY ice formed an ice tongue that survived the summer melt season. To the north of this tongue of MY ice, there is a trend over the last decade towards increasing late winter pack divergence. This leads to 20-30% thin ice area of melting out earlier in Summer, which may precondition the accelerated Summer ice loss observed in recent years. Late Winter opening in 2007 was two times greater than previously observed. Our results support the hypothesis (Perovich et al. 2008) that Summer 2007 thinning of MY ice was caused by an increase in solar absorption in the upper ocean due to lower sea ice concentration than normal, as the low ice concentration was partially driven by an anomalous opening event in the Beaufort Sea perennial ice pack in Spring 2007.

We present the recent state of Arctic sea ice including observations from 2008 in a context of a multi-decadal perspective. A new record has been set in the reduction of Arctic perennial sea ice extent this winter. As of 1 March 2008, the extent of perennial sea ice was reduced by one million km² compared to that at the same time last year as observed by the NASA SeaWinds scatterometer on the QuikSCAT satellite (QSCAT). This decrease of perennial ice continues the precipitous declining trend observed in this decade. Furthermore, the perennial sea ice pattern change was deduced by buoy-based estimates with 50 years of data from drifting buoys and measurement camps to track sea ice movement around the Arctic Ocean. The combination of the satellite and surface data records confirms that the reduction of winter perennial ice extent broke the record in 2008 compared to data over the last half century.

In the winter, the loss of perennial ice extent was driven by winds that compressed the ice and transported it out of the Fram Strait and Nares Strait to warmer ocean waters at lower latitudes, where the ice melted very effectively. Another historical fact is that the boundary of perennial sea ice already crossed the North Pole (NP) in February 2008, leaving the area around the NP occupied by seasonal sea ice. This is the first time, not only from the satellite data record but also in the history of sea ice charting at the National Ice Center since the 1970's, that observations indicate the seasonal ice migration into the NP area so early in winter. In the Bering Sea by 12 March 2008, the sea ice edge reached to an extent that coincided with the continental shelf break, indicating bathymetric effects on the distribution of water masses along the Aleutian North Slope, Bering Slope, Anadyr and Kamchatka currents that governed the pattern of sea ice formation in this region. Moreover, QSCAT observations showed that, in the 2008 winter, seasonal ice occupied the Northern Sea Route, and most of two routes of the Northwest Passage, north and south of Victoria Island, which facilitated ice retreat and the opening of waterways this summer.

Most importantly, the shift from a perennial to a seasonal ice covered Arctic Ocean significantly decreases the overall surface albedo resulting in enhanced solar heat absorption in spring and summer, which further decreases the Arctic ice pack through the ice albedo feedback mechanism. In early September 2008, a major melt event occurred over a large region extending from the Beaufort Sea across the Kara Sea toward the Laptev Sea, with active melt areas encroaching in the NP vicinity. This melt event was caused by an advection of warm air from the south, which melted and pushed sea ice away at the same time. At that time, the total extent of Arctic sea ice was about 0.5 million km² (size of Spain) larger than that at the same time last year.

The Arctic has undergone dramatic changes in weather, climate and environment. It should be noted that many of these changes were first observed and studied using data from the IABP (http://iabp.apl.washington.edu). For example, IABP data were fundamental to Walsh et al. (1996) showing that atmospheric pressure has decreased (Figure 1), Rigor et al. (2000) showing that air temperatures have increased (Figure 2), and to Proshutinsky and Johnson (1997); Steele and Boyd, (1998); Kwok, (2000); and Rigor et al. (2002) showing that the clockwise circulation of sea ice and the ocean has weakened (Figure 1). All these results relied heavily on IABP data.

Helicopter-borne electromagnetic sea ice thickness measurements were performed over the Transpolar Drift in late summers of 2001, 2004, and 2007, continuing ground-based measurements since 1991. These show an ongoing reduction of modal and mean ice thicknesses in the region of the North Pole of up to 53 and 44%, respectively, since 2001. A buoy derived ice age model showed that the thinning was mainly due to a regime shift from predominantly multi- and second-year ice in earlier years to first-year ice in 2007, which had modal and mean summer thicknesses of 0.9 and 1.27 m. Measurements of second-year ice which still persisted at the North Pole in April 2007 indicate a reduction of late-summer second-year modal and mean ice thicknesses since 2001 of 20 and 25% to 1.65 and 1.81 m, respectively. The regime shift to younger and thinner ice could soon result in an ice free North Pole during summer.

The extent of arctic sea ice during summer has declined to record minima during the past decade. Four of the lowest minima in the last 100 years were observed during this period, with the new record minimum set in September 2007. Can we predict these minima?

The ability to predict Arctic sea ice conditions has many important social and economic consequences. Many species and cultures depend on the sea ice for habitat and subsistence. The lack of sea ice in an area along the coast may allow ocean waves to fetch up higher, producing stronger storm surges which may threaten low elevation coastal towns. The extent of Arctic sea ice affects navigation from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic along the Northern Sea Route and Northwest Passage, which are as much as 60% shorter than the conventional routes from Europe to the west coast of the U.S. or Japan. And the decline of sea ice may increase access to natural resources, e.g. the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic may store as much as 25% of the world's petroleum reserves.

Operational prediction of sea ice conditions for the United States (and the world) is provided by the National/Naval Ice Center (NIC), which is an interagency collaboration between the Navy, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Coast Guard. The NIC currently provides 2-week global ice analyses and 30-day forecasts of sea ice conditions. However, some of the NIC's procedures are based on studies dating back to the 1970's, and recent advances in our understanding of Arctic climate provide some insight into how we may be able to improve our ability to predict Arctic sea ice conditions on weekly to seasonal time scales. The decline of sea ice may be attributed to global warming (e.g. the Arctic Climate Impacts Assessment Report 2004), but this decline may also be attributed to a change in the wind driven circulation of Arctic sea ice. In a series of papers, we showed that the prior winter Arctic Oscillation (AO) conditions explained most of the trends in summer sea ice extent in the Eurasian sector of the Arctic Ocean (Rigor et al. 2002), while in the Alaskan sector the recent extreme minima may be due to the drift of younger, thinner ice towards the Alaskan coast during the recent predominance of high to moderate AO conditions (Rigor and Wallace, 2004). Since it takes a number of years for sea ice to age and thicken, these results imply that we may be able to predict the extent of summer sea ice months in advance.

This projects aims to transition research on arctic sea ice variability using observations from the International Arctic Buoy Programme into an operational sea ice forecast by the NIC as part of the NOAA's Transition of Research Applications to Climate Services program.

During the past two years we have observed an increased transport of the older, thicker perennial sea ice across the Arctic Ocean to be exported through Fram Strait into the Greenland Sea. This transport has left much of the Arctic Ocean covered by thinner, first-year sea ice which has less mass to survive the summer melt, especially in the Eurasian sector of the Arctic Ocean. Given these observations we predict that this summer will set a new record minimum in summer sea ice extent in the Arctic, and plan to discuss the skill of this forecast.

The extent of Arctic perennial sea ice, the year-round ice cover, was significantly reduced between March 2005 and March 2007 by 1.08 x 106 km², a 23% loss from 4.69 x 106 km² to 3.61 x 106 km², as observed by the QuikSCAT/SeaWinds satellite scatterometer (QSCAT). Moreover, the buoy-based Drift-Age Model (DM) provided long-term trends in Arctic sea-ice age since the 1950s. Perennial-ice extent loss in March within the DM domain was noticeable after the 1960s, and the loss became more rapid in the 2000s when QSCAT observations were available to verify the model results. QSCAT data also revealed mechanisms contributing to the perennial-ice extent loss: ice compression toward the western Arctic, ice loading into the Transpolar Drift (TD) together with an acceleration of the TD carrying excessive ice out of Fram Strait, and ice export to Baffin Bay. Dynamic and thermodynamic effects appear to be combining to expedite the loss of perennial sea ice.

Temperature, salinity, and chemical measurements, including the nutrients silicic acid, nitrate, nitrite, ammonium, and phosphate, the oxygen isotopic composition of seawater, and barium concentrations were obtained from the central Arctic Ocean along transects radiating from the North Pole in early spring, 2000–2006. Stations that were reoccupied over this time period were grouped into five regions: from Ellesmere Island, (1) north along 70°W and (2) northwest along 90°W; near the North Pole, (3) on the Amundsen Basin flank and (4) directly over the Lomonosov Ridge; (5) through the Makarov Basin along 170–180°W. These regions had been shown by others to have undergone marked changes in water-mass assemblies in the early 1990s, but our time series tracer hydrographic data indicate a partial return of Pacific origin water within the mixed layer and the upper halocline layers beginning in 2003–2004. Back-trajectories derived from satellite-tracked ice buoys for these stations indicate that the upper levels of Pacific water in the central Arctic in 2004–2006 transited westward from the Bering Strait along the Siberian continental slope into the East Siberian Sea before entering the Transpolar Drift Stream (TPD). By 2004, the TPD shifted back from an alignment over the Alpha-Mendeleev Ridge toward the Lomonosov Ridge, as was characteristic prior to the early 1990s. At most stations occupied in 2006, a decrease in the Pacific influence was observed, both in the mixed layer and in the upper halocline, which suggests the Canadian branch of the TPD was shifting back toward North America. Clearly the system is more variable than has been previously appreciated.

Relations in year-to-year variability between wintertime Sea-Ice Concentrations (SICs) in the Okhotsk Sea and atmospheric anomalies consisting of zonal and meridional 1000-hPa wind speeds and 850-hPa air temperatures are studied using a singular value decomposition analysis. It is revealed that the late autumn (October-November) atmospheric conditions strongly influence sea-ice variability from the same season (late autumn) through late winter (February-March), in which sea-ice extent is at its maximum. The autumn atmospheric conditions for the positive sea-ice anomalies exhibit cold air temperature anomalies over the Okhotsk Sea and wind anomalies blowing into the Okhotsk Sea from Siberia. These atmospheric conditions yield anomalous ocean-to-atmosphere heat fluxes and cold sea surface temperature anomalies in the Okhotsk Sea. Hence, these results suggest that the atmospheric conditions affect the sea-ice through heat anomalies stored in sea-ice and oceanic fields. The late autumn atmosphere conditions are related to large 700-hPa geopotential height anomalies over the Bering Sea and northern Eurasia, which are related to a stationary Rossby wave propagation over the North Pacific and that from the North Atlantic to Eurasia, respectively. In addition, the late autumn atmospheric preconditioning also plays an important role in the decreasing trend in the Okhotsk sea-ice extent observed from 1980 to the mid-1990s. Based on the lagged sea-ice response to the late autumn atmosphere, a simple seasonal prediction scheme is proposed for the February-March sea-ice extent using four-month leading atmospheric conditions. This scheme explains 45% of the variance of the Okhotsk sea-ice extent.

Sediment-laden sea ice is widespread over the shallow, wide Siberian Arctic shelves, with off-shelf export from the Laptev and East Siberian Seas contributing substantially to the Arctic Ocean's sediment budget. By contrast, the North American shelves, owing to their narrow width and greater water depths, have not been deemed as important for basin-wide sediment transport by sea ice. Observations over the Chukchi and Beaufort shelves in 2001/02 revealed the widespread occurrence of sediment-laden ice over an area of more than 100,000 km² between 68 and 74°N and 155 and 170°W. Ice stratigraphic studies indicate that sediment inclusions were associated with entrainment of frazil ice into deformed, multiple layers of rafted nilas, indicative of a flaw-lead environment adjacent to the landfast ice of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. This is corroborated by buoy trajectories and satellite imagery indicating entrainment in a coastal polynya in the eastern Chukchi Sea in February of 2002 as well as formation of sediment-laden ice along the Beaufort Sea coast as far eastward as the Mackenzie shelf. Moored upward-looking sonar on the Mackenzie shelf provides further insight into the ice growth and deformation regime governing sediment entrainment. Analysis of Radarsat Synthetic Aperture (SAR) imagery in conjunction with bathymetric data help constrain the water depth of sediment resuspension and subsequent ice entrainment (>20 m for the Chukchi Sea).

Sediment loads averaged at 128 t km^-2, with sediment occurring in layers of roughly 0.5 m thickness, mostly in the lower ice layers. The total amount of sediment transported by sea ice (mostly out of the narrow zone between the landfast ice edge and waters too deep for resuspension and entrainment) is at minimum 4 x 10⁶ t in the sampling area and is estimated at 5–8 x 10⁶ t over the entire Chukchi and Beaufort shelves in 2001/02, representing a significant term in the sediment budget of the western Arctic Ocean. Recent changes in the Chukchi and Beaufort Sea ice regimes (reduced summer minimum ice extent, ice thinning, reduction in multi-year ice extent, altered drift paths and mid-winter landfast ice break-out events) have likely resulted in an increase of sediment-laden ice in the area. Apart from contributing substantially to along- and across-shelf particulate flow, an increase in the amount of dirty ice significantly impacts (sub-)ice algal production and may enhance the dispersal of pollutants.

Three of the past six summers have exhibited record low sea-ice extent on the Arctic Ocean. These minima may have been dynamically induced by changes in the surface winds. Based on results of a simple model that keeps track of the age of ice as it moves about on the Arctic Ocean, we show that the areal coverage of thick multi-year ice decreased precipitously during 1989–1990 when the Arctic Oscillation was in an extreme "high index" state, and has remained low since that time. Under these conditions, younger, thinner ice anomalies recirculate back to the Alaskan coast more quickly, decreasing the time that new ice has to ridge and thicken before returning for another melt season. During the 2002 and 2003 summers this anomalously younger, thinner ice was advected into Alaskan coastal waters where extensive melting was observed, even though temperatures were locally colder than normal. The age of sea-ice explains more than half of the variance in summer sea-ice extent.

Data collected by the International Arctic Buoy Programme from 1979 to 1998 are analyzed to obtain statistics of sea level pressure (SLP) and sea ice motion (SIM). The annual and seasonal mean fields agree with those obtained in previous studies of Arctic climatology. The data show a 3-hPa decrease in decadal mean SLP over the central Arctic Ocean between 1979–88 and 1989–98. This decrease in SLP drives a cyclonic trend in SIM, which resembles the structure of the Arctic Oscillation (AO).

Regression maps of SIM during the wintertime (January–March) AO index show 1) an increase in ice advection away from the coast of the East Siberian and Laptev Seas, which should have the effect of producing more new thin ice in the coastal flaw leads; 2) a decrease in ice advection from the western Arctic into the eastern Arctic; and 3) a slight increase in ice advection out of the Arctic through Fram Strait. Taken together, these changes suggest that at least part of the thinning of sea ice recently observed over the Arctic Ocean can be attributed to the trend in the AO toward the high-index polarity.

Rigor et al. showed that year-to-year variations in the wintertime AO imprint a distinctive signature on surface air temperature (SAT) anomalies over the Arctic, which is reflected in the spatial pattern of temperature change from the 1980s to the 1990s. Here it is shown that the memory of the wintertime AO persists through most of the subsequent year: spring and autumn SAT and summertime sea ice concentration are all strongly correlated with the AO index for the previous winter. It is hypothesized that these delayed responses reflect the dynamical influence of the AO on the thickness of the wintertime sea ice, whose persistent "footprint" is reflected in the heat fluxes during the subsequent spring, in the extent of open water during the subsequent summer, and the heat liberated in the freezing of the open water during the subsequent autumn.

In August 1997, RRS Discovery cruise 230 (World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) section A25) ran a hydrographic section into Cape Farewell on the southern tip of Greenland. The closest approach to the shore was 2 nm in a water depth of 160 m over the east Greenland shelf. Analysis of the hydrographic data (conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD), vessel-mounted acoustic Doppler current profiler, and thermosalinograph) has revealed a current flowing southwestward, ~15 km wide, 100 m deep, and centered ~10 km offshore. We believe it to be driven by meltwater runoff from Greenland. This feature, which we call the East Greenland Coastal Current (EGCC), carries a little less than 1 Sv (10⁶ m³ s^-1) with peak current speeds of ~1 m s^-1 at the surface. The center of the EGCC lies on a salinity front with maximum salinity contrast ~4 practical salinity units (psu) between coast and shelf break and between surface and bottom. A spot value of freshwater transport is 0.06 Sv (1800 km³ yr^-1), which is equivalent to ~30% of the Arctic freshwater gain. The presence of the EGCC and its continuity up the east Greenland coast as far as Denmark Strait is confirmed in satellite sea surface temperature images and surface drifter tracks. We estimate the sensitivity of its freshwater flux to changes in melt season mean surface air temperature to be >25% per 1°C.

The statistics of surface air temperature observations obtained from buoys, manned drifting stations, and meteorological land stations in the Arctic during 1979–97 are analyzed. Although the basic statistics agree with what has been published in various climatologies, the seasonal correlation length scales between the observations are shorter than the annual correlation length scales, especially during summer when the inhomogeneity between the ice-covered ocean and the land is most apparent. During autumn, winter, and spring, the monthly mean correlation length scales are approximately constant at about 1000 km; during summer, the length scales are much shorter, that is, as low as 300 km. These revised scales are particularly important in the optimal interpolation of data on surface air temperature (SAT) and are used in the analysis of an improved SAT dataset called International Arctic Buoy Programme/Polar Exchange at the Sea Surface (IABP/POLES). Compared to observations from land stations and the Russian North Pole drift stations, the IABP/POLES dataset has higher correlations and lower rms errors than previous SAT fields and provides better temperature estimates, especially during summer in the marginal ice zones. In addition, the revised correlation length scales allow data taken at interior land stations to be included in the optimal interpretation analysis without introducing land biases to grid points over the ocean. The new analysis provides 12-h fields of air temperatures on a 100-km rectangular grid for all land and ocean areas of the Arctic region for the years 1979–97.

The IABP/POLES dataset is then used to study spatial and temporal variations in SAT. This dataset shows that on average melt begins in the marginal seas by the first week of June and advances rapidly over the Arctic Ocean, reaching the pole by 19 June, 2 weeks later. Freeze begins at the pole on 16 August, and the freeze isotherm advances more slowly than the melt isotherm. Freeze returns to the marginal seas a month later than at the pole, on 21 September. Near the North Pole, the melt season length is about 58 days, while near the margin, the melt season is about 100 days. A trend of +1°C (decade)^-1 is found during winter in the eastern Arctic Ocean, but a trend of –1°C (decade^-1 is found in the western Arctic Ocean. During spring, almost the entire Arctic shows significant warming trends. In the eastern Arctic Ocean this warming is as much as 2°C (decade)^-1. The spring warming is associated with a trend toward a lengthening of the melt season in the eastern Arctic. The western Arctic, however, shows a slight shortening of the melt season. These changes in surface air temperature over the Arctic Ocean are related to the Arctic Oscillation, which accounts for more than half of the surface air temperature trends over Alaska, Eurasia, and the eastern Arctic Ocean but less than half in the western Arctic Ocean.