Across the ice-free seasons of 2005–2011, in-water optical measurements were used to study the buoyant plume formed by the combined discharge of the Ob and Yenisei rivers in the southern Kara Sea — one of the largest river plumes in the Arctic Ocean.
The work resolved how wind forcing and river discharge produce a distinctive structure in which the Yenisei-dominated water mass is isolated from ambient sea water by the more saline Ob-dominated mass. High-resolution measurements, combined with satellite imagery and reanalysis, characterised the frequency and variability of this configuration. The results were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans (2017).