The roaring twenties
It is a new year, a new decade, and I am waking up in Norway. I love this country, with its mountains and its fjords and all the towns that end in ø. I love the people, with their sing-songy voices and affinity for the outdoors. I love the seafood and the bread and the sweet brown cheese. Norway is my jumping-off point to the Arctic, and I love it every time I return here.
Friends, I am beginning my new decade in the best way possible: with a research trip to the Arctic. I'm working with colleagues from WHOI and the Ocean University of China to study the effects of climate change in a western Svalbard fjord. For the next two weeks, we will be in Ny-Ålesund, the northernmost continuously inhabited place on Earth, at 79° N. We will collect samples from the water column and the seafloor in Kongsfjorden to describe and understand the effects of a warming climate on the biological community in the fjord.
Usually, Kongsfjorden has had a strong seasonal pattern in water temperature. Warm Atlantic water from the West Spitsbergen Current would enter the fjord in summer, while in winter, the fjord would be filled with colder "winter cooled water" that formed locally as sea ice froze on the surface. There's some complexity to the patterns, but the summer-winter dichotomy has always held true. However, in the past 10 years or so, Atlantic water has started penetrating the fjord in mid-winter, melting all the sea ice and resetting it to an autumn-like state.
This phenomenon of mid-winter warming has been documented by researchers from Scotland and Norway, and it represents a radical departure from the previous seasonal paradigm. We know that it's happening, and we know that the Atlantic water brings with it some species of zooplankton from offshore. The part we understand less is how the Atlantic water affects animals that live on the seafloor in the fjord. That is what my collaborators and I intend to figure out. We scheduled our research trip when the Atlantic water is likely to show up, so if we're lucky, we can collect samples before and after it enters the fjord. We'll also compare our samples to data collected by other researchers in previous years to see how the new seasonal pattern affects the community over longer periods of time.
I look forward to sharing our research with you over the next two weeks. Stay tuned for updates from Svalbard!
Friends, I am beginning my new decade in the best way possible: with a research trip to the Arctic. I'm working with colleagues from WHOI and the Ocean University of China to study the effects of climate change in a western Svalbard fjord. For the next two weeks, we will be in Ny-Ålesund, the northernmost continuously inhabited place on Earth, at 79° N. We will collect samples from the water column and the seafloor in Kongsfjorden to describe and understand the effects of a warming climate on the biological community in the fjord.
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| A simplified schematic showing the major currents around Svalbard. WSC, West Spitsbergen Current (Atlantic water); EGC, East Greenland current (Arctic water); ESC, East Spitsbergen Current (Arctic water). Yellow dot marks Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard. |
This phenomenon of mid-winter warming has been documented by researchers from Scotland and Norway, and it represents a radical departure from the previous seasonal paradigm. We know that it's happening, and we know that the Atlantic water brings with it some species of zooplankton from offshore. The part we understand less is how the Atlantic water affects animals that live on the seafloor in the fjord. That is what my collaborators and I intend to figure out. We scheduled our research trip when the Atlantic water is likely to show up, so if we're lucky, we can collect samples before and after it enters the fjord. We'll also compare our samples to data collected by other researchers in previous years to see how the new seasonal pattern affects the community over longer periods of time.
I look forward to sharing our research with you over the next two weeks. Stay tuned for updates from Svalbard!
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