Abstract
Tidal and wind-driven near-inertial currents play a vital role in the changing Arctic climate and the marine ecosystems. We compiled 429 available moored current observations taken over the last two decades throughout the Arctic to assemble a pan-Arctic atlas of tidal band currents. The atlas contains different tidal current products designed for the analysis of tidal parameters from monthly to inter-annual time scales. On shorter time scales, wind-driven inertial currents cannot be analytically separated from semidiurnal tidal constituents. Thus, we include 10–30 h band-pass filtered currents, which include all semidiurnal and diurnal tidal constituents as well as wind-driven inertial currents for the analysis of high-frequency variability of ocean dynamics. This allows for a wide range of possible uses, including local case studies of baroclinic tidal currents, assessment of long-term trends in tidal band kinetic energy and Arctic-wide validation of ocean circulation models. This atlas may also be a valuable tool for resource management and industrial applications such as fisheries, navigation and offshore construction.
Highlights
Background & SummaryTidal currents are often the dominant source of current variability and play an important role in shaping the Arctic Ocean hydrography and sea ice cover[1,2,3]
Where barotropic tidal currents flow across steep slopes or rough topography in the presence of stratification, energy can be converted from barotropic to baroclinic tides whose energy dissipates in mixing processes[5]
Most observations were obtained with Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCPs) from TELEDYNE RD Instruments (TRDI), with the 300 kHz variant being the most commonly used
Summary
Background & SummaryTidal currents are often the dominant source of current variability and play an important role in shaping the Arctic Ocean hydrography and sea ice cover[1,2,3]. Barotropic tidal models[1,4] based on the depth-integrated momentum and continuity equations provide ocean surface height and depth-averaged currents for major tidal constituents throughout the Arctic. The importance of baroclinic tidal processes was highlighted, for example, by Luneva et al.[3], who found that the addition of tidal currents to an atmospherically forced three-dimensional simulation reduced pan-Arctic sea ice volume by ~15%. In contrast to barotropic tides, the generation, propagation and dissipation of baroclinic tidal waves are sensitive to stratification, mean flow, and energy losses through friction and mixing within the water column They may, change substantially with variations in the background ocean state associated with weather-band and seasonal changes in forcing, ocean mesoscale variability (e.g., eddies) and as the Arctic Ocean changes on longer time scales e.g.6
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