Special Issue of Oceanography on "The Changing Arctic Ocean

The Oceanography Society proposes to publish a special issue of the open-access journal Oceanography entitled “The Changing Arctic Ocean”. The special issue will articulate in clear and compelling language the many ways the Arctic Ocean’s environment and ecosystem are changing due to a warming climate. The proposed special issue will broadly review significant scientific accomplishments in Arctic Ocean research over the past decade and provide a look at future research opportunities.

The special issue is organized around changes in: (1) sea ice dynamics, (2) physical oceanography from basin scale to the microscale, (3) pan-Arctic and global linkages, and (4) marine ecosystem processes, as well as (5) how these changes influence geopolitical issues, (6) how these changes cause concern among Arctic Indigenous communities, and (7) how these changes are being assessed through observing systems. Oceanography is an open access journal that strives for clarity and simplicity in language through rigorously peer-reviewed articles that include high-quality scientific graphics and photos to bring topics alive for its readership.

The proposed special issue of Oceanography will highlight research addressing how the Arctic Ocean is changing and how those changes are affecting humankind. It will provide a coherent and readable compendium of results from scientific research that can be used as a basis for undergraduate and graduate classroom instruction and discussions, as well as to inform policymakers.

Since 2000, the Arctic atmosphere has warmed at more than twice the rate of the global average. This warming has been accompanied by a reduction in Arctic sea-ice extent, multi-year sea ice volume, the seasonal duration of ice cover over portions of the basin and its adjacent shelf seas, as well as the Greenland Ice Sheet. The oceanic response has included a general warming of the upper ocean and changes in wave climatology, circulation, mixing, stratification, and volumetric and property exchanges between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

The physical changes are altering the marine ecosystem, the composition and abundance of various biological communities, and biogeochemical cycling. These changes are concerning to Indigenous coastal communities who foresee threats to their culture through alterations in subsistence food resources, increased coastal erosion rates, and increased safety hazards while hunting or fishing on ice or open water.

These communities are also concerned with new impacts arising from a potential increase in marine industrial, tourist, and military activities. Over the past decade, the Arctic science community has responded to these changes and their associated threats to society through advancements in the integration of models and observations, important additions to the Arctic Observing Network systems, and most recently, through the yearlong expedition into the Arctic ice pack under the auspices of the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) project.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.