Gascard Jean-Claude

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Gascard
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Jean-Claude
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  • Article
    Arctic Ocean warming contributes to reduced polar ice cap
    (American Meteorological Society, 2010-12) Polyakov, Igor V. ; Timokhov, Leonid A. ; Alexeev, Vladimir A. ; Bacon, Sheldon ; Dmitrenko, Igor A. ; Fortier, Louis ; Frolov, Ivan E. ; Gascard, Jean-Claude ; Hansen, Edmond ; Ivanov, Vladimir V. ; Laxon, Seymour W. ; Mauritzen, Cecilie ; Perovich, Donald K. ; Shimada, Koji ; Simmons, Harper L. ; Sokolov, Vladimir T. ; Steele, Michael ; Toole, John M.
    Analysis of modern and historical observations demonstrates that the temperature of the intermediate-depth (150–900 m) Atlantic water (AW) of the Arctic Ocean has increased in recent decades. The AW warming has been uneven in time; a local 1°C maximum was observed in the mid-1990s, followed by an intervening minimum and an additional warming that culminated in 2007 with temperatures higher than in the 1990s by 0.24°C. Relative to climatology from all data prior to 1999, the most extreme 2007 temperature anomalies of up to 1°C and higher were observed in the Eurasian and Makarov Basins. The AW warming was associated with a substantial (up to 75–90 m) shoaling of the upper AW boundary in the central Arctic Ocean and weakening of the Eurasian Basin upper-ocean stratification. Taken together, these observations suggest that the changes in the Eurasian Basin facilitated greater upward transfer of AW heat to the ocean surface layer. Available limited observations and results from a 1D ocean column model support this surmised upward spread of AW heat through the Eurasian Basin halocline. Experiments with a 3D coupled ice–ocean model in turn suggest a loss of 28–35 cm of ice thickness after 50 yr in response to the 0.5 W m−2 increase in AW ocean heat flux suggested by the 1D model. This amount of thinning is comparable to the 29 cm of ice thickness loss due to local atmospheric thermodynamic forcing estimated from observations of fast-ice thickness decline. The implication is that AW warming helped precondition the polar ice cap for the extreme ice loss observed in recent years.
  • Article
    Multipurpose acoustic networks in the integrated Arctic Ocean observing system
    (Arctic Institute of North America, 2015) Mikhalevsky, Peter N. ; Sagen, Hanne ; Worcester, Peter F. ; Baggeroer, Arthur B. ; Orcutt, John A. ; Moore, Sue E. ; Lee, Craig M. ; Vigness-Raposa, Kathleen J. ; Freitag, Lee E. ; Arrott, Matthew ; Atakan, Kuvvet ; Beszczynska-Möller, Agnieszka ; Duda, Timothy F. ; Dushaw, Brian D. ; Gascard, Jean-Claude ; Gavrilov, Alexander N. ; Keers, Henk ; Morozov, Andrey K. ; Munk, Walter H. ; Rixen, Michel ; Sandven, Stein ; Skarsoulis, Emmanuel ; Stafford, Kathleen M. ; Vernon, Frank L. ; Yuen, Mo Yan
    The dramatic reduction of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean will increase human activities in the coming years. This activity will be driven by increased demand for energy and the marine resources of an Arctic Ocean accessible to ships. Oil and gas exploration, fisheries, mineral extraction, marine transportation, research and development, tourism, and search and rescue will increase the pressure on the vulnerable Arctic environment. Technologies that allow synoptic in situ observations year-round are needed to monitor and forecast changes in the Arctic atmosphere-ice-ocean system at daily, seasonal, annual, and decadal scales. These data can inform and enable both sustainable development and enforcement of international Arctic agreements and treaties, while protecting this critical environment. In this paper, we discuss multipurpose acoustic networks, including subsea cable components, in the Arctic. These networks provide communication, power, underwater and under-ice navigation, passive monitoring of ambient sound (ice, seismic, biologic, and anthropogenic), and acoustic remote sensing (tomography and thermometry), supporting and complementing data collection from platforms, moorings, and vehicles. We support the development and implementation of regional to basin-wide acoustic networks as an integral component of a multidisciplinary in situ Arctic Ocean observatory.