‘Atlantification’ of Arctic Ocean Reducing Ice Cover All the Way to the Bering Straits, New Research Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Mar. 1 – The impact of global warming on the Arctic and its ice cover has attracted enormous attention, but one aspect of this process has not, the process known as Atlantification in which the arrival of warmer waters from the Atlantic is accelerating the melting of sea ice in the Arctic all the way to the Bering Straits.
    As part of its Eye on the Arctic series, Ellis Quinn of The Barents Observer discusses the latest research on this process, one that is having a far larger and broader impact on the Arctic Ocean than anyone had though  earlier (thebarentsobserver.com/news/atlantification-ushering-in-new-era-of-sea-ice-loss-in-the-siberian-arctic/425321).
    That groundbreaking  research about the process itself is contained in a new article by two Russian scholars working abroad, two South Koreans and one American, in the current issue of Science Advances and is available in English online at science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.adq7580.
    The more rapid melting of Arctic sea ice that Atlantification makes possible will have an impact on weather patterns as well as on the melting of permafrost in the Russian north, but its most immediate consequence will be to change the environment in which NSR trade and the navies of various countries active in the Arctic operate.
    As such, its findings need to be factored in to all discussions of the Arctic and its future.