Abstract

The Arctic Ocean has changed rapidly in recent decades. As a result of the changes in sea ice cover and freshwater fluxes, the density structure and turbulence within the Arctic have also changed. In particular, it seems likely that the Arctic turbulence is changing from a unique “quiet” regime to Atlantic-like turbulence. Linking such changes to potential instabilities of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning circulation (AMOC) is difficult due to a lack of adequate understanding of the underlying physics and the associated lack of model parameterization of such processes. In this talk, I overview the recent progress and discuss the steps required to enable climate models to capture the impact of rapid Arctic changes on the global MOC .