The Arctic Ocean: Round Two

Abstract

Every decade or so, it is worth revisiting a topic that we previously covered in Oceanography to provide the community with updates on progress. This special issue on The New Arctic Ocean is the latest example. In 2011, we published a special issue on The Changing Arctic Ocean (https://tos.org/​oceanography/​issue/​volume-24-issue-03) featuring some of the advances made in polar science resulting from the International Polar Year of 2007–2008. Articles in this current special issue further explore the continuing, profound, and increasingly rapid changes occurring in the Arctic Ocean, illuminated by another decade of advances in data collection, analysis, and computation, and enriched by infusions of Indigenous knowledge. Continued warming of the “new” Arctic Ocean, which is already exhibiting further sea ice decline and “Atlantification,” more coastal erosion, the potential for more frequent and larger harmful algal blooms, and alterations to ecosystem functioning, among other significant changes, is of great consequence to local coastal communities’ food security and infrastructure, and some changes, such as sea ice decline, likely have global implications.