A ship of opportunity section to the North Pole: upper ocean temperature observations

Abstract

During August 1990 XBT temperature profiles were collected in the upper 500 m of the water column along three sections in the Barents, Kara and Laptev Seas and two across the Eurasian Basin of the Arctic Ocean. The shelf sections showed at several locations winter bottom water with temperatures near the freezing point. The subsurface boundary current along the continental slope in the Eurasian Basin, consisting of warm Atlantic Water, was unusually warm when compared to climatological and recent synoptic data. This warming in 1990 may be linked to strong interannual temperature fluctuations of the inflowing Atlantic Water in Fram Strait. A second topographically steered flow above the Arctic Mid Ocean Ridge was detected by tracing fossil intrusive structures created in the Laptev Sea and modified by double diffusive fluxes.