Drivers of Marine Heatwaves in the Arctic Ocean

Abstract

AbstractAmong the documented consequences of anthropogenic global warming are the increased frequency and duration of marine heatwaves in the global ocean. The literature dedicated to Arctic marine heatwaves corroborates those results, but fails to identify the heat sources and sinks. Because of the numerous feedbacks impacting polar regions, understanding the processes triggering and dissipating those extreme events is particularly important to predict their occurrence in a fast changing ocean. A three‐dimensional regional ice‐ocean numerical model is used to calculate a surface mixed layer heat budget and to investigate mechanisms generating and dissipating marine heatwaves. The majority of the marine heatwaves are onset by surface heat fluxes and decayed by bottom and surface heat fluxes. The dominant processes are spatially and seasonally heterogeneous: lateral heat flux can become the primary process when advecting heat anomalies at the main Arctic gateways or by triggering temperature extremes in winter. Using a Reynolds decomposition, it can be determined that the shoaling of the surface mixed layer induced by ice melt can significantly lengthen and intensify Arctic marine heatwaves. In winter, the analysis of marine heatwaves poses unique challenges, with the long term freshening of the Arctic inducing a positive trend of 0.1°C per decade for the freezing point. Arctic marine heatwaves are expected to keep increasing in duration and intensity due to the increased trend of the primary process, the surface heat flux, and their dissipation by bottom heat flux provides a pathway for heat from the atmosphere to the Arctic subsurface water masses.