Formation and export of water masses produced in Arctic shelf polynyas — process studies of oceanic convection

Abstract

The contribution of brine-enriched bottom water from Arctic shelves to intermediate and deep water masses of the adjacent Arctic Ocean or the Nordic Seas is a widely discussed topic in Arctic Oceanography. This paper presents an overview of process-oriented modelling which was conducted to deepen our understanding of oceanic convection and its role in water mass formation. It arrives at a conceptual picture of the convective formation of bottom water masses in Arctic shelf seas as a consequence of ice–ocean interactions and considers the role of sediments in slope convection. To investigate and discuss the processes which take part in transformation, production and export of dense shelf water masses a hierarchy of numerical models of different type and spatial resolution was applied. The models cover spatial scales from well below the internal Rossby radius of deformation up to the mesoscale.