It is therefore of particular interest to study their relative importance and the mechanisms behind the variability of the respective processes. In this study, presented in the Journal of Geophysical Research, the authors apply an Ocean General Circulation Model (OGCM), which provides simulated hydrography and current data with good coverage for large ocean domains and periods of several decades. To ensure the model validity in this area, the model has been evaluated against observations of the estimated inflow from moored current meters in the Barents Sea Opening (BSO), and against temperature time series in the Kola section in the Barents Sea.
Based on lagged correlations between different climatological time series, the authors show that heat transport through the BSO and solar heat flux are about equally important to the climate variability in the Barents Sea. The heat transport has greater potential of predictability due to a relatively long time lag. Furthermore, the non-solar and the net heat flux variability are governed by fluctuations in the oceanic heat content.
All time series considered important for the Barents Sea climate variability show significant correlation to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) pattern on decadal time scale (Figure 1). As the associated low pressure system in the Nordic Seas moves eastward from 1948-77 to 1978-06, the correlation between NAO and heat transports into the Barents Sea becomes higher.
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Figure 1 Regression (contours) and correlation (colours) between SLP (1948-06) and the modelled BSO heat transports (upper left), solar heat flux into the ocean (upper right), heat content (lower left), and non-solar heat flux into the ocean. The regression contours relate SLP-anomalies in hPa to heat transport and -flux anomalies of 1 PW, and to heat content anomalies of 1 ZJ (Z=1021). |