Spreading and Transformation of River Discharge in the Arctic Ocean.

This paper is focused on research of freshwater discharge of the Great Siberian rivers (Ob, Yenisei, and Lena) in the Russian region of the Arctic Ocean. Discharges of these rivers form freshened surface layers with total area of hundreds of thousands of square kilometers, which strongly affect many climatic, physical, biological, and geochemical processes at the Russian Arctic seas. Based on the recent studies, it is shown that the freshened surface layer in the Eastern Arctic has inhomogeneous structure, spreading dynamics, seasonal and inter-annual variability caused by its formation by large estuarine rivers in the Kara Sea and large deltaic river in the Laptev and East-Siberian seas. The large-scale inter-basin transport of the freshened surface layer at the Arctic shelf is discussed, which is an important component of the freshwater cycle in the Arctic Ocean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]