[A-CG43] Science in the Arctic Region

[ACG43-P06] A modeling study on dense water formation in the Barents Sea

*Takao Kawasaki¹, Yoshiki Komuro², Jun Ono² (1.Atmosphere and Ocean Research Insitutute, the University of Tokyo, 2.Institute of Arctic Climate and Environment Research, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology)

Keywords:Barents Sea, Ocean modeling, dense water formation

It is important to understand the Arctic climate system, which is undergoing drastic changes. There is a lack of understanding of the mechanisms that maintain and change the temperature and salinity in the Arctic Ocean, which causes uncertainty in future projections of the Arctic climate system. The dense water originating in the eastern shelves is not well represented even in state-of-art climate models. Here, the dense water formation in the Barents Sea, where the warm/salty Atlantic water is transported and modified by several mechanisms, is focused on.
High-resolution modeling (horizontal grid size is 2-10 km) is utilized to reproduce the Atlantic water transport in the Barents Sea. The temperature and salinity at the Barents Sea Opening (inflow) and St. Anna Trough (outflow), and major pathways of Atlantic water are reproduced in our model. The position of the margin sea-ice zone and sea-ice drift speed are also well simulated. We will obtain the contributions of several processes to dense water formation in the Barents Sea.