To the projects and challenges of domestic hydrophysical study of the global ocean’s polar regions

Abstract

One of the climatically significant, but the poor studied hydrophysical factor in the polar regions of the world ocean is the subsurface layer of relatively warm seawater of subtropical origin. In the Arctic Ocean, this layer is associated with the waters of the Gulfstream, the highlatitude continuation of which in the form of a spur of the North Atlantic current penetrates into the Arctic basin, where it sinks to the depth of its density and spreads throughout its vast space in the layer of 100–900 m. The existence of a subsurface layer with an anomalous inversion vertical profile of water temperature also occurs in the Southern ocean. The article discusses the problem of monitoring the dynamics of this layer and obtaining data from a field experiment on its interaction with the atmosphere in the context of the to-day climate change of the Arctic and Antarctic. There is a reason to hope that the planned development of modern Russian scientific research in the polar regions of the world ocean will help to solve this important climatic problem. The paper presents some key results of this kind of domestic oceanological studies of the mid-twentieth century, which made a significant contribution to the theory and experiment related to the dynamics of the Southern ocean.