IPY: Collaborative Research: The Pacific Gateway to the Arctic - Quantifying and Understanding Bering Strait Oceanic Fluxes

Funds are provided for an observationally focused study of the entire Bering Strait region (in collaboration with Russian, Canadian and Japanese scientists). The study will include deployment of a high resolution mooring array from 2007-2009, covering the two channels of the strait and one "climate" site to the north of the strait, annual CTD surveys and mooring servicing, satellite data analysis and theoretical and modeling efforts. Science objectives are:

1) to measure the velocities and water properties of the Bering Strait throughflow; 2) to understand the physical processes influencing the properties of the Bering Strait throughflow, with special focus on mechanisms driving change, and consequent impacts on the Arctic Ocean; 3) to quantify oceanic fluxes of volume, freshwater, heat, nutrients and chlorophyll biomass through the strait; 4) to design an optimum monitoring system for oceanic fluxes through the Bering Strait.

The PIs' hypotheses are that Bering Strait throughflow properties are set by global and regional oceanic and atmospheric processes, which are vulnerable to climate change, and that understanding the physical processes and scalings in the strait are key to quantifying current conditions, assessing future change scenarios, and designing an efficient observational scheme for this oceanic gateway.