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The Beaufort Gyre is a key feature of the Arctic Ocean, acting as a reservoir for freshwater in the region. Depending on whether the prevailing atmospheric circulation in the Arctic is anticyclonic or cyclonic, either a net accumulation or release of freshwater occurs. The sources of freshwater to the Arctic Ocean are well established and include contributions from the North American and Eurasian Rivers, the Bering Strait Pacific water inflow, sea ice meltwater, and precipitation, but their contribution to the Beaufort Gyre freshwater accumulation varies with changes in the atmospheric circulation. Here we use a Lagrangian backward tracking technique in conjunction with the 1/12‐degree resolution Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean model to investigate how sources of freshwater to the Beaufort Gyre have changed in recent decades, focusing on increase in the Pacific water content in the gyre between the late 1980s and early 2000s. Using empirical orthogonal functions we analyze the change in the Arctic oceanic circulation that occurred between the 1980s and 2000s. We highlight a "waiting room" advective pathway that was present in the 1980s and provide evidence that this pathway was caused by a shift in the center of Ekman transport convergence in the Arctic. We discuss the role of these changes as a contributing factor to changes in the stratification, and hence potentially the biology, of the Beaufort Gyre region. Plain Language Summary: The Beaufort Gyre, a clockwise ice and water circulation in the Arctic Ocean, is an important feature of the Arctic because it stores a large volume of fresh—relative to the rest of the ocean—water. Depending on the atmospheric circulation driving it, the Beaufort Gyre can either accumulate or release this freshwater. The sources of relatively freshwater to the Beaufort Gyre are Arctic rivers, the Bering Strait, and melting sea ice. By tracking virtual particles in a high‐resolution ocean model, we investigate how these sources have changed in recent decades, and identify a change in the pathways bringing them to the Beaufort Gyre. This change in ocean circulation was found to correlate with a change in the mixed layer depth in the model. Key Points: Lagrangian particle tracking technique used to investigate advective pathways associated with different sources of Beaufort Gyre waterChange in advective pathways associated with Pacific inflow to the gyre occurred between 1980s and 2000sThis change in pathways correlates with a shoaling of the modeled mixed layer depth in the Beaufort Gyre region [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Arctic Ocean is experiencing profound environmental changes as the climate warms. Understanding how these changes will affect Arctic biological productivity is key for predicting future Arctic ecosystems and the global CO2 balance. Here we use in situ gas measurements to quantify rates of gross oxygen production (GOP, total photosynthesis) and net community production (NCP, net CO2 drawdown by the biological pump) in the mixed layer in summer or fall from 2011 to 2016 in the Beaufort Gyre. NCP and GOP show spatial and temporal variations with higher values linked with lower concentrations of sea ice and increased upper ocean stratification. Mean rates of GOP range from 8 ± 1 to 54 ± 9 mmol O2·m−2·d−1 with the highest mean rates occurring in summer of 2012. Mean rates of NCP ranged from 1.3 ± 0.2 to 2.9 ± 0.5 mmol O2·m−2·d−1. The mean ratio of NCP/GOP, a measure of how efficiently the ecosystem is recycling its nutrients, ranged from 0.04 to 0.17, similar to ratios observed at lower latitudes. Additionally, a large increase in total photosynthesis that occurred in 2012, a year of historically low sea ice coverage, persisted for many years. Taken together, these data provide one of the most complete characterizations of interannual variations of biological productivity in this climatically important region, can serve as a baseline for future changes in rates of production, and give an intriguing glimpse of how this region of the Arctic may respond to future lack of sea ice. Plain Language Summary: The Arctic Ocean is changing rapidly because of global climate change. Sea ice is declining, with the Arctic expected to be ice‐free in the summer by the middle of this century. The effect of these environmental changes on the marine carbon cycle is poorly known. In this study, rates of marine photosynthesis and net carbon dioxide drawdown in the summer or fall of 2011–2016 show that ice concentration was the largest environmental predictor of biological productivity, with smaller sea ice concentrations leading to increased rates of photosynthesis and thus likely to higher carbon dioxide drawdown. Additionally, a large increase in total photosynthesis that occurred in 2012, a year of historically low sea ice coverage, persisted for many years. An alternative hypothesis for the large increase in photosynthesis in 2012 is that the data in 2011 were collected before the onset of summer stratification (time when mixed layer depth gets very shallow), whereas data for all subsequent years were collected after this increase in stratification had occurred. Key Points: Sea ice concentration is the environmental factor that has the strongest correlation with net community production and photosynthesisRates of net community production and total photosynthesis were significantly positively correlated with N2, an index of stratificationOne interpretation suggests that as sea ice melts, the gyre will have large increases in photosynthesis but small ones in net CO2 drawdown [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Beaufort Gyre (BG) is a large anticyclonic circulation in the Arctic Ocean. Its strength is directly related to the halocline depth, and therefore also to the storage of freshwater. It has recently been proposed that the equilibrium state of the BG is set by the Ice‐Ocean Governor, a negative feedback between surface currents and ice‐ocean stress, rather than a balance between lateral mesoscale eddy fluxes and surface Ekman pumping. However, mesoscale eddies are present in the Arctic Ocean; it is therefore important to extend the Ice‐Ocean Governor theory to include lateral fluxes due to mesoscale eddies. Here, a nonlinear ordinary differential equation is derived that represents the effects of wind stress, the Ice‐Ocean Governor, and eddy fluxes. Equilibrium and time‐varying solutions to this three‐way balance equation are obtained and shown to closely match the output from a hierarchy of numerical simulations, indicating that the analytical model represents the processes controlling BG equilibration. The equilibration timescale derived from this three‐way balance is faster than the eddy equilibration timescale and slower than the Ice‐Ocean Governor equilibration timescales for most values of eddy diffusivity. The sensitivity of the BG equilibrium depth to changes in eddy diffusivity and the presence of the Ice‐Ocean Governor is also explored. These results show that predicting the response of the BG to changing surface forcing and sea ice conditions requires faithfully capturing the three‐way balance between the Ice‐Ocean Governor, wind stress, and eddy fluxes. Key Points: We combine eddies and the Ice‐Ocean Governor into a single theory of Beaufort Gyre equilibrationOur analytical theory can predict equilibria and adjustment timescalesThe equilibrium state of the Beaufort Gyre is set by a three‐way balance between the Ice‐Ocean Governor, wind stress, and eddy diffusivity [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring the surface circulation of the ice-covered Arctic Ocean is generally limited in space, time or both. We present a new 12-year record of geostrophic currents at monthly resolution in the ice-covered and ice-free Arctic Ocean derived from satellite radar altimetry and characterise their seasonal to decadal variability from 2003 to 2014, a period of rapid environmental change in the Arctic. Geostrophic currents around the Arctic basin increased in the late 2000s, with the largest increases observed in summer. Currents in the southeastern Beaufort Gyre accelerated in late 2007 with higher current speeds sustained until 2011, after which they decreased to speeds representative of the period 2003-2006. The strength of the northwestward current in the southwest Beaufort Gyre more than doubled between 2003 and 2014. This pattern of changing currents is linked to shifting of the gyre circulation to the northwest during the time period. The Beaufort Gyre circulation and Fram Strait current are strongest in winter, modulated by the seasonal strength of the atmospheric circulation. We find high eddy kinetic energy (EKE) congruent with features of the seafloor bathymetry that are greater in winter than summer, and estimates of EKE and eddy diffusivity in the Beaufort Sea are consistent with those predicted from theoretical considerations. The variability of Arctic Ocean geostrophic circulation highlights the interplay between seasonally variable atmospheric forcing and ice conditions, on a backdrop of long-term changes to the Arctic sea ice-ocean system. Studies point to various mechanisms influencing the observed increase in Arctic Ocean surface stress, and hence geostrophic currents, in the 2000s - e.g. decreased ice concentration/thickness, changing atmospheric forcing, changing ice pack morphology; however, more work is needed to refine the representation of atmosphere-ice-ocean coupling in models before we can fully attribute causality to these increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The circulation of the Arctic Ocean has traditionally been studied as a two-layer system, with a wind-driven anticyclonic gyre in the surface layer and a cyclonic boundary current in the Atlantic Water (AW) layer, primarily forced remotely through inflow and outflow to the basin. Here, an idealized numerical model is used to investigate the interplay between the dynamics of the two layers and to explore the response of the circulation in each of the layers to a change in the forcing in either layer. In the model, the intensity of the circulation in the surface and AW layers is primarily set by the ocean surface stress curl intensity and the inflow to the basin, respectively. Additionally, the surface layer circulation can strongly modulate the intensity of the intermediate layer by constraining the lateral extent of the AW current on the slope. In contrast, a change in the AW current strength has little effect on the surface layer circulation. The intensity of the circulation in the surface layer adjusts over a decade, on a time scale consistent with a balance between Ekman pumping and an eddy-induced volume flux toward the boundary, while the circulation in the AW layer adjusts quickly to any change of forcing (~1 month) through the propagation of boundary-trapped waves. As the two layers have different adjustment processes and time scales, and are subject to forcing that varies on all time scales, the interplay between the dynamics of the two layers is complex, and more simultaneous observations of the circulation within the two layers are required to fully understand it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]