NSF Award
9504434
9504434 This project will obtain a series of upper ocean current profiles from the acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) permanently mounted on the hull of the German icebreaking research ship Polarstern. The data will be obtained from the Eurasian Basin of the Arctic Ocean in the summer of 1995. The project has two specific objectives: to measure the spatial distribution of the background and the internal wave shear with sufficient horizontal coverage to identify possible sources and dissipation regions for internal wave energy, and to document the distribution of Atlantic Intermediate Water within the Eurasian Basin and modified surface water on the arctic continental shelf. The resulting information will allow a substantial improvement in our understanding of how internal waves, through shear-induced turbulence, affect the arctic oceanic heat budget. A better understanding of the circulation processes in the eastern Arctic Ocean will clarify interactions between the oceanic and the global climate, and provide information required to parameterize and to tune global circulation models currently being used to study climate change. ***
