Geography
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Spatial and temporal trends of remotely sensed sea-ice cover, sea surface temperatures, chlorophyll-a concentration and primary production in the Baffin Bay, Davis Strait and Labrador Sea were analyzed for the 1998-2017 period. We found spatial variability in the trends of these cryospheric, biologic and oceanographic phenomena. For example, in the northern Baffin Bay, we observed decreases in annual sea-ice persistence, yet increases along the Labrador Sea-ice edge during winter, with the latter having significant correlations with broader atmospheric patterns. In general, we observed increases in summer sea surface temperatures across the study region, except a small area of cooling along the southern Greenlandic coast. We also found significant negative trends in April chlorophyll-a and primary production followed by significant positive trends for both biological phenomena in May, owing to anomalously high values in 2014 and 2015. Notably, we found a significant positive correlation between days of monthly sea ice presence in April with May primary production quantities. Finally, we found a significant positive trend in total annual primary production over the study period. This novel finding suggests an important relationship between the timing of breakup along the sea-ice edge and peaks in biological production. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press.
Publication Title
Annals of Glaciology
Publication Date
2020
Volume
61
Issue
83
First Page
426
Last Page
440
ISSN
0260-3055
DOI
10.1017/aog.2020.66
Keywords
Polar and subpolar oceans, remote sensing, sea ice
Repository Citation
York, Ashley V.; Frey, Karen E.; and Young, Luisa N.C., "Changes at the edge: Trends in sea ice, ocean temperature and ocean color at the Northwest Atlantic/Southern Arctic interface" (2020). Geography. 192.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_geography/192
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright Conditions
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
