A ‘regime shift’ is happening in the Arctic Ocean, Stanford scientists say

Folks , this study points at far reaching implications for the Arctic environment and it also goes counter to existing models of the Arctic :-

A ‘regime shift’ is happening in the Arctic Ocean, Stanford scientists say

Stanford scientists find the growth of phytoplankton in the Arctic Ocean has increased 57 percent over just two decades, enhancing its ability to soak up carbon dioxide. While once linked to melting sea ice, the increase is now propelled by rising concentrations of tiny algae.

By Josie Garthwaite

Scientists at Stanford University have discovered a surprising shift in the Arctic Ocean. Exploding blooms of phytoplankton, the tiny algae at the base of a food web topped by whales and polar bears, have drastically altered the Arctic’s ability to transform atmospheric carbon into living matter. Over the past decade, the surge has replaced sea ice loss as the biggest driver of changes in uptake of carbon dioxide by phytoplankton.

A phytoplankton bloom in the Barents Sea turned surface waters a milky blue in July 2016. (Image credit: Jeff Schmaltz and Joshua Stevens, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response, NASA)

The research appears July 10 in Science . Senior author Kevin Arrigo, a professor in Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth), said the growing influence of phytoplankton biomass may represent a “significant regime shift” for the Arctic, a region that is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth.

The study centers on net primary production (NPP), a measure of how quickly plants and algae convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into sugars that other creatures can eat. “The rates are really important in terms of how much food there is for the rest of the ecosystem,” Arrigo said. “It’s also important because this is one of the main ways that CO2 is pulled out of the atmosphere and into the ocean.”

A thickening soup

Arrigo and colleagues found that NPP in the Arctic increased 57 percent between 1998 and 2018. That’s an unprecedented jump in productivity for an entire ocean basin. More surprising is the discovery that while NPP increases were initially linked to retreating sea ice, productivity continued to climb even after melting slowed down around 2009. “The increase in NPP over the past decade is due almost exclusively to a recent increase in phytoplankton biomass,” Arrigo said.

Put another way, these microscopic algae were once metabolizing more carbon across the Arctic simply because they were gaining more open water over longer growing seasons, thanks to climate-driven changes in ice cover. Now, they are growing more concentrated, like a thickening algae soup.

“In a given volume of water, more phytoplankton were able to grow each year,” said lead study author Kate Lewis, who worked on the research as a PhD student in Stanford’s Department of Earth System Science. “This is the first time this has been reported in the Arctic Ocean.”

The left image shows the Arctic Ocean with its shelf seas and basin. Green arrows indicate inflow currents; purple arrows indicate outflow currents. The right image shows the rate of change in chlorophyll in the Arctic Ocean between 1998 and 2018, measured in milligrams per cubic meter per year. Gray lines outline subregions. Black pixels indicate no data. (Image credit: Kate Lewis. Data source: NASA)

New food supplies

Phytoplankton require light and nutrients to grow. But the availability and intermingling of these ingredients throughout the water column depend on complex factors. As a result, although Arctic researchers have observed phytoplankton blooms going into overdrive in recent decades, they have debated how long the boom might last and how high it may climb.

By assembling a massive new collection of ocean color measurements for the Arctic Ocean and building new algorithms to estimate phytoplankton concentrations from them, the Stanford team uncovered evidence that continued increases in production may no longer be as limited by scarce nutrients as once suspected. “It’s still early days, but it looks like now there is a shift to greater nutrient supply,” said Arrigo, the Donald and Donald M. Steel Professor in Earth Sciences.

The researchers hypothesize that a new influx of nutrients is flowing in from other oceans and sweeping up from the Arctic’s depths. “We knew the Arctic had increased production in the last few years, but it seemed possible the system was just recycling the same store of nutrients,” Lewis said. “Our study shows that’s not the case. Phytoplankton are absorbing more carbon year after year as new nutrients come into this ocean. That was unexpected, and it has big ecological impacts.”

Decoding the Arctic

The researchers were able to extract these insights from measures of the green plant pigment chlorophyll taken by satellite sensors and research cruises. But because of the unusual interplay of light, color and life in the Arctic, the work required new algorithms. “The Arctic Ocean is the most difficult place in the world to do satellite remote sensing,” Arrigo explained. “Algorithms that work everywhere else in the world – that look at the color of the ocean to judge how much phytoplankton are there – do not work in the Arctic at all.”

The difficulty stems in part from a huge volume of incoming tea-colored river water, which carries dissolved organic matter that remote sensors mistake for chlorophyll. Additional complexity comes from the unusual ways in which phytoplankton have adapted to the Arctic’s extremely low light. “When you use global satellite remote sensing algorithms in the Arctic Ocean, you end up with serious errors in your estimates,” said Lewis.

Yet these remote-sensing data are essential for understanding long-term trends across an ocean basin in one of the world’s most extreme environments, where a single direct measurement of NPP may require 24 hours of round-the-clock work by a team of scientists aboard an icebreaker, Lewis said. She painstakingly curated sets of ocean color and NPP measurements, then used the compiled database to build algorithms tuned to the Arctic’s unique conditions. Both the database and the algorithms are now available for public use.

The work helps to illuminate how climate change will shape the Arctic Ocean’s future productivity, food supply and capacity to absorb carbon. “There’s going to be winners and losers,” Arrigo said. “A more productive Arctic means more food for lots of animals. But many animals that have adapted to live in a polar environment are finding life more difficult as the ice retreats.”

Phytoplankton growth may also peak out of sync with the rest of the food web because ice is melting earlier in the year. Add to that the likelihood of more shipping traffic as Arctic waters open up, and the fact that the Arctic is simply too small to take much of a bite out of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. “It’s taking in a lot more carbon than it used to take in,” Arrigo said, “but it’s not something we’re going to be able to rely on to help us out of our climate problem.”

Regards

Folks , in the above article there is a cryptic comment that "a new influx of nutrients coming up from the depths of the Arctic ocean , is fuelling this boom in phytoplankton" .

**I think this fresh influx of nutrients is actually emerging from the North Polar opening into the Arctic ocean !

Regards

1 Like

Sidhartha,

You have hit the nail on the head!

But why is this influx surging? Is this situation being "arranged"? What could the purpose be?

Hmmm

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Dean , I see this surge of nutrients , in correlation with two other developments currently underway in the Arctic region :-

  1. The searing heat wave localised to Siberia

  2. The rapid movement of Earth's North magnetic Pole from Canada towards Siberia

Most people don't realise how the frigid Arctic waters are much more abundant in phytoplankton than all the warmer oceans of the world . This is really counter-intuitive even in normal times, but at present the phytoplankton "explosion" in the Arctic waters is insane , that too without any apparent cause :))

Regards

List members , there is in fact yet another factor adding to the series of ongoing "coincidences" in the Arctic - an "ANOMALOUS" high pressure system dominating the Arctic Ocean since late June .

**Please look carefully at the colour coded weather maps...makes me think the root cause lies inside the North Polar opening - I see a strong correlation with the map showing a boom in phytoplankton...hmm !

Mainstream climatologists are clueless , as usual and just engaging in guesswork :))

The Arctic Ocean is dominated by a strong high-pressure system, rapidly melting the sea ice and impacting the Transpolar Drift System

By Andrej Flis | Global weather | 12 July 2020

The Arctic sea ice melts every year from spring to early autumn. This year, the summer melt season is very strong. Currently, the Arctic sea ice extent and volume are near or at record lowest values in the modern records. That is largely due to the persistent high-pressure system over the Arctic Ocean.

A strong, anomalous high-pressure system has been dominating the Arctic Ocean since late June. It has become a semi-permanent feature by now and is forecast to remain over the Arctic Ocean for at least two more weeks.

1_arctic-pressure-anomaly-forecast-ecmwf-july-2020

arctic-ocean-pressure-anomaly-july-2020

A high-pressure system has been previously present over the Siberian sector since at least early May, and has contributed to record high temperatures over Siberia and also the surrounding Polar regions. Below is the temperature anomaly analysis for May and June. It reveals the Siberian “hotspot” and the warmer than normal Arctic Circle.

arctic-temperature-analysis-warming-may-june-2020

Persistent high-pressure systems over the Arctic ocean are a real problem for the ice cap in summer. There is 24 hours of daylight over the North Pole during summer, and high-pressure areas provide clear, cloudless skies, accelerating ice melt without a break. The graphic below shows the daily Arctic sea ice loss. We can see since early July, that the daily ice melt rate has increased, coinciding with the onset of the strong Anticyclone.

arctic-sea-ice-daily-ice-melt-2020

CURRENT ARCTIC ICE

The latest data reveals rapid sea ice loss over the Arctic. The first graphic below shows the rapid reduction of the Arctic sea ice extent since the beginning of July. The second graphic (by Zachary Labe) is a comparison of the current sea ice extent with the past years, where we can see that 2020 is currently at the lowest extent for the first half of July.

arctic-sea-ice-ectent-graph-2020

arctic-sea-ice-extent-comparison-years

The most unusually rapid melt was of course in the Laptev Sea, which was directly impacted by the record warm temperatures in Siberia. The current sea ice extent there is around the normal levels for August.

arctic_Laptev_Sea_map

arctic-siberia-sea-ice-2020

High-resolution analysis from the MERCATOR system shows the latest sea ice concentration. The sea ice extent and concentration are well below normal, especially east of the North Pole.

arctic-sea-ice-concentration-july-2020

arctic-sea-ice-concentration-extent-anomaly

The high-resolution video analysis below shows the sea ice melt and concentration change since March. Take notice of the faster melt rate from mid-June onwards.

Arctic sea ice melt - March to July 2020

Arctic sea ice melt - March to July 2020 - SWE /FA

Looking at the previous 10 days and the next 10 days (forecast), we can see most of the ice loss was in the outer regions. The second map which shows the concentration change forecast actually shows an increase in concentrations over the central region. That is likely due to the transport of ice towards the central region, compacting the ice, and increasing the concentration.

arctic-sea-ice-concentration-change-july-2020

arctic-sea-ice-concentration-forecast-july-2020

Sea ice concentration is directly related to thickness. Contrary to popular belief, the Arctic sea ice is rather thin, ranging from a few centimeters to only a few meters at best. If we could reduce the size of the Arctic ice cap down to that of a sheet of paper, the ice cap would be around 800 times thinner!

arctic-sea-ice-thickness-july-2020

Our high-resolution video of sea ice thickness shows the change from March to July. We can nicely see just how much motion there is in the ice cap and how quickly it melted since June.

Arctic sea ice motion and thickness change

Arctic sea ice thickness change from March to July 2020 - SWE /FA

The first 10 days of July have featured quite an extensive thinning of the ice cap. The thinning rate is set to reduce slightly in the coming 10 days, but it will still significantly impact the total volume of the sea ice.

arctic-sea-ice-thickness-change-july-2020

arctic-sea-ice-thickness-forecast-july-2020

Currently, the sea ice volume is at record low levels for this time of year. It will continue to decline, but will likely be around a similar or slightly lower level as last year by the end of the month.

arctic-sea-ice-volume-july-2020

TRANSPOLAR ICE DRIFT

The Transpolar Drift Stream is a major ocean current of the Arctic Ocean, transporting sea ice from the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea towards Fram Strait. It flows across the entire polar region. It is primarily driven by the wind and responds to the yearly and decadal weather pattern changes. The graphic below shows the average direction of the Transpolar Drift Stream (TDS).

arctic-ocean-transpolar-drift-beaufort-gyre

The current high-resolution analysis of the sea ice drift, reveals that the direction of the drift is almost the opposite. The sea ice has a clear clockwise rotation. It directly reflects the Anticyclonic air movement of the strong high-pressure system over the Arctic Ocean. It is likely that the change in the pressure systems over the Arctic will normalize the direction of the drift system. But weakening or reversing of the Transpolar drift system permanently could reduce the ice cap growth in winter. That would mean lower sea ice extent going into spring and summer, increasing the chances for a Blue Ocean Event. That is a complete absence of sea ice over the Arctic Ocean, with less than 1 million square kilometers of sea ice area.

arctic-sea-ice-drift-speed-july-2020

Regards

Folks , this unusual high pressure system in the Arctic , at this time of the year , has nothing to do with "manmade global warming" . It is clearly an unrelated phenomena , which is UNIQUE to the Polar region....that is the strongest clue :))

Regards

Folks , if you relook at the various thermal images of the Arctic in the above post , in the context of what we saw in my other post for "wild Polar vortexes on Venus" , you will notice a pattern , applicable to all (Hollow) planets .

It is evident that the climatic processes in the Polar regions are very , very different than the rest of the planetary surface (but it influences the atmosphere over the rest of the surface) . Unless this fact is recognized , there can be little further progress in understanding how the atmosphere (and hence global weather) really operates .

Humans have only a very marginal impact (relatively speaking) on what happens in the Polar regions and therefore the global climate , whose principal drivers are the external Sun and the Inner Sun (via the Polar openings) .

For the inner planets of our Solar system , the Sun plays a bigger role in their global climate on their surfaces , but for the outer planets , their Inner Sun (via their Polar openings) , plays the dominant role , in their respective global climates on their surfaces.

Regards