Gerdes Rudiger

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Gerdes
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Rudiger
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  • Article
    Recent advances in Arctic ocean studies employing models from the Arctic Ocean Model Intercomparison Project
    (Oceanography Society, 2011-09) Proshutinsky, Andrey ; Aksenov, Yevgeny ; Kinney, Jaclyn Clement ; Gerdes, Rudiger ; Golubeva, Elena ; Holland, David ; Holloway, Greg ; Jahn, Alexandra ; Johnson, Mark ; Popova, Ekaterina E. ; Steele, Michael ; Watanabe, Eiji
    Observational data show that the Arctic Ocean has significantly and rapidly changed over the last few decades, which is unprecedented in the observational record. Air and water temperatures have increased, sea ice volume and extent have decreased, permafrost has thawed, storminess has increased, sea level has risen, coastal erosion has progressed, and biological processes have become more complex and diverse. In addition, there are socio-economic impacts of Arctic environmental change on Arctic residents and the world, associated with tourism, oil and gas exploration, navigation, military operations, trade, and industry. This paper discusses important results of the Arctic Ocean Model Intercomparison Project, which is advancing the role of numerical modeling in Arctic Ocean and sea ice research by stimulating national and international synergies for high-latitude research.
  • Article
    Arctic pathways of Pacific Water : Arctic Ocean Model Intercomparison experiments
    (John Wiley & Sons, 2016-01-08) Aksenov, Yevgeny ; Karcher, Michael ; Proshutinsky, Andrey ; Gerdes, Rudiger ; de Cuevas, Beverly ; Golubeva, Elena ; Kauker, Frank ; Nguyen, An T. ; Platov, Gennady A. ; Wadley, Martin ; Watanabe, Eiji ; Coward, Andrew C. ; Nurser, A. J. George
    Pacific Water (PW) enters the Arctic Ocean through Bering Strait and brings in heat, fresh water, and nutrients from the northern Bering Sea. The circulation of PW in the central Arctic Ocean is only partially understood due to the lack of observations. In this paper, pathways of PW are investigated using simulations with six state-of-the art regional and global Ocean General Circulation Models (OGCMs). In the simulations, PW is tracked by a passive tracer, released in Bering Strait. Simulated PW spreads from the Bering Strait region in three major branches. One of them starts in the Barrow Canyon, bringing PW along the continental slope of Alaska into the Canadian Straits and then into Baffin Bay. The second begins in the vicinity of the Herald Canyon and transports PW along the continental slope of the East Siberian Sea into the Transpolar Drift, and then through Fram Strait and the Greenland Sea. The third branch begins near the Herald Shoal and the central Chukchi shelf and brings PW into the Beaufort Gyre. In the models, the wind, acting via Ekman pumping, drives the seasonal and interannual variability of PW in the Canadian Basin of the Arctic Ocean. The wind affects the simulated PW pathways by changing the vertical shear of the relative vorticity of the ocean flow in the Canada Basin.
  • Article
    Influence of ice thickness and surface properties on light transmission through Arctic sea ice
    (John Wiley & Sons, 2015-09-04) Katlein, Christian ; Arndt, Stefanie ; Nicolaus, Marcel ; Perovich, Donald K. ; Jakuba, Michael V. ; Suman, Stefano ; Elliott, Stephen M. ; Whitcomb, Louis L. ; McFarland, Christopher J. ; Gerdes, Rudiger ; Boetius, Antje ; German, Christopher R.
    The observed changes in physical properties of sea ice such as decreased thickness and increased melt pond cover severely impact the energy budget of Arctic sea ice. Increased light transmission leads to increased deposition of solar energy in the upper ocean and thus plays a crucial role for amount and timing of sea-ice-melt and under-ice primary production. Recent developments in underwater technology provide new opportunities to study light transmission below the largely inaccessible underside of sea ice. We measured spectral under-ice radiance and irradiance using the new Nereid Under-Ice (NUI) underwater robotic vehicle, during a cruise of the R/V Polarstern to 83°N 6°W in the Arctic Ocean in July 2014. NUI is a next generation hybrid remotely operated vehicle (H-ROV) designed for both remotely piloted and autonomous surveys underneath land-fast and moving sea ice. Here we present results from one of the first comprehensive scientific dives of NUI employing its interdisciplinary sensor suite. We combine under-ice optical measurements with three dimensional under-ice topography (multibeam sonar) and aerial images of the surface conditions. We investigate the influence of spatially varying ice-thickness and surface properties on the spatial variability of light transmittance during summer. Our results show that surface properties such as melt ponds dominate the spatial distribution of the under-ice light field on small scales (<1000 m2), while sea ice-thickness is the most important predictor for light transmission on larger scales. In addition, we propose the use of an algorithm to obtain histograms of light transmission from distributions of sea ice thickness and surface albedo.
  • Preprint
    An assessment of Arctic Ocean freshwater content changes from the 1990s to the 2006-2008 period
    ( 2010-12-10) Rabe, Benjamin ; Karcher, Michael ; Schauer, Ursula ; Toole, John M. ; Krishfield, Richard A. ; Pisarev, Sergey ; Kauker, Frank ; Gerdes, Rudiger ; Kikuchi, Takashi
    Unprecedented summer-season sampling of the Arctic Ocean during the period 2006−2008 makes possible a quasi-synoptic estimate of liquid freshwater (LFW) inventories in the Arctic Ocean basins. In comparison to observations from 1992−1999, LFW content relative to a salinity of 35 in the layer from the surface to the 34 isohaline increased by 8400 ± 2000 km3 in the Arctic Ocean (water depth greater than 500m). This is close to the annual export of freshwater (liquid and solid) from the Arctic Ocean reported in the literature. Observations and a model simulation show regional variations in LFW were both due to changes in the depth of the lower halocline, often forced by regional wind-induced Ekman pumping, and a mean freshening of the water column above this depth, associated with an increased net sea ice melt and advection of increased amounts of river water from the Siberian shelves. Over the whole Arctic Ocean, changes in the observed mean salinity above the 34 isohaline dominated estimated changes in LFW content; the contribution to LFW change by bounding isohaline depth changes was less than a quarter of the salinity contribution, and non-linear effects due to both factors were negligible.