Survey, 2011-09-01, Arctic Ocean

Kara Sea, Ob and Yenisei river plumes

Repeat Arctic deployments across the 2005–2011 ice-free seasons, resolving the structure of the buoyant plume formed by Ob and Yenisei river discharge in the southern Kara Sea. Reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research, 2017.

Published figures

Interpolated fields from the campaign, reproduced as issued. Plate titles carry the LIFL-9 under its original designation, UFL-9.

Regional composite

Interpolated particle count field mapped along the lidar track, Kara Sea, Regional composite — Fig. 3Particle count

July 2016

Interpolated total suspended solids field mapped along the lidar track, Kara Sea, July 2016 — Fig. 6TSS

September 2017

Interpolated total suspended matter field mapped along the lidar track, Kara Sea, September 2017 — Fig. 9TSM

Kara SeaArctic Ocean

● Kara Sea 2016, July, 2016-07-28 → 2016-07-30121,400 measurements IDW interpolation, 600 samples

Chl-a0.034.45µg/L

CDOM0.318.51a.u.

TSS0.8220.7mg/L

Fig. 10 Campaign scan. 121,400 lidar returns along the ship track, switchable across Chl-a, CDOM, TSS. Field view interpolates the channel across the surveyed water from the same measurements (inverse-distance weighting). Shoreline: Natural Earth.

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).