Variability of oceanographic and ice properties in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago

Year-long moorings have been in place in eastern Barrow Strait since August 1998 to measure pack ice properties and oceanographic transport of the Arctic surface waters passing through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA). In addition, ice charts produced by the Canadian Ice Service (CIS) provide a 28-year time series of the position of the landfast ice edge in eastern Parry Channel. From the mooring time series data, volume transport shows large interannual variability, and the annual cycle shows a maximum in summer and a minimum in the fall. Regression analysis with the Arctic surface wind field shows that the highest correlation between monthly mean transport anomalies in Barrow Strait is with alongshore wind anomalies northwest of Banks Island in the Beaufort Sea, 1000km west of the mooring site. In contrast, local wind speed and air temperature explain over half of the variance in the location of the spring consolidated ice edge.