FooW:that paper discusses conditions from about 3 yearsback before this summer's surge of Atlantic water. I would expect the Atlantification to get worse.
Right. It's not just Mosaic pushing scientific revelations about the current melting season out to 2023, most 'current' journal articles are 2-3 years back. There's a
terrible mismatch between the rapid rate of Arctic change, the needs of policy planners, and mechanisms for keeping scientific research up to date.
To take just two examples, the biggest news this melt season was shoaling of Atlantic Waters and erosion of stratification described in the two Polyakov papers. Those had 2020 submission dates, spent 8 months in peer review but actually analyzed mooring data from 2004-2018 with the main focus 2016-18.
So what happened in 2019 and 2020? We have near real time satellite coverage and weather reanalysis, so surface ice comings and goings, wind, sea surface temperatures and sea surface salinities along with their statistical anomalies.
What's missing is what we're mostly interested in: worsening conditions below the sea surface. Polyakov has given excellent interviews that clarify tipping point consequences but their impact is diminished by lack of current information. If it was an emergency back then, what is it now?
The main nrt update option seems to be the Mercator Ocean model. It's not at all clear what modern mooring tie points if any have been assimilated there. MO has salinities and temperatures at -30m and -100m but now farther back than 2019. Temperature anomalies are only available for the surface.
It's not correct to attribute the record position of the ice front on the Atlantic side to melt or specifically to atlantification induced melt. A lot of the 'melt' has just been displacement by the wind.
The Arctic will freeze over every year long after the first BOE
Substitute 'Barents' for 'Arctic' above? The Barents, some
1500 km farther north than the southern Chukchi, has been in near-total BOE year-round for decades.The northern third has ice cover in winter but it apparently none of it forms locally: it is all blown in from the Kara and Arctic Ocean.
The Barents Sea counterpart to the Polyakov papers is S Lind's 2018 review of Barents oceanography which finds an equally
dire ongoing atlantification there but for data ending in 2016. It's been cited 131 times since but has not brought up to date.
The story there is fresh water from ice melt is needed to sustain stratification but it's not there any more in the necessary volume. The Barents is approaching terminal atlantification.
Arctic warming hotspot in the northern Barents Sea linked to declining sea-ice import
S Lind R Ingvaldsen T Furevik
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0205-yhttps://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantification-arctic-sea-tipping-towards-new-climate-regimeThe Arctic has warmed dramatically in recent decades, with greatest temperature increases observed in the northern Barents Sea. The warming signatures are not constrained to the atmosphere, but extend throughout the water column. Here, using a compilation of hydrographic observations from 1970 to 2016, we investigate the link between changing sea-ice import and this Arctic warming hotspot.
A sharp increase in ocean temperature and salinity is apparent from the mid-2000s, which we show can be linked to a recent decline in sea-ice import and a corresponding loss in freshwater, leading to weakened ocean stratification, enhanced vertical mixing and increased upward fluxes of heat and salt that prevent sea-ice formation and increase ocean heat content. Thus, the northern Barents Sea may soon complete the transition from a cold and stratified Arctic to a warm and well-mixed Atlantic-dominated climate regime.