Tags: Arctic Ocean, Climate Change, Ocean Water Temperatures
By Ned Rozell, Geophysical Institute, Science Forum
Recent, end-of-arctic-summer ship journeys have helped scientists discover that waters of the Arctic Ocean have cooled, at least in the area they surveyed. “Everywhere in the Nansen Basin except Fram Strait, regional temperatures are colder than they were two, three, four years ago,” says Igor Polyakov of the International Arctic Research Center at UAF. “There?s a steady cooling tendency at all the locations we measured.” Polyakov helps coordinate yearly scientific cruises on the Russian Icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn.
The expedition lasted from Aug. 15 to Sept. 7, 2009 and enabled scientists to measure sea temperatures in a swath of the Arctic Ocean known as the Nansen Basin, located north of Norway and Russia. Researchers found that the 1 degree Celsius warming of recent years had dropped back to near normal.