Quantifying the Bering Strait Oceanic Fluxes and their Impacts on Sea-Ice and Water Properties in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas and Western Arctic Ocean for 2013-2014

The oceanic fluxes of volume, heat, and freshwater through the Bering Strait, the only oceanic input to the Arctic from the Pacific, are critical to the water properties of the Chukchi Sea, act as a trigger of sea-ice melt in the Chukchi, provide a subsurface source of heat to the Arctic in winter (with possible impacts on sea-ice), and are a major component of freshwater input to the Arctic (Figures 1 and 2). Quantification of these fluxes (which all vary significantly seasonally and interannually) is critical to understanding the physics of the western Arctic, including sea-ice retreat timing and patterns, and possibly sea-ice thickness. Recent data [Woodgate et al., 2012] show a 50% increase in the Bering Strait fluxes from 2001 to present (Figure 2), and indicate that remote-sensed data are insufficient to assess the interannual variability in the throughflow and that year-round in situ moorings are currently the only effective way of quantifying the oceanic fluxes of volume, heat and freshwater from the Pacific to the Arctic.