BREMERHAVEN, Germany, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- A German-led international team of scientists has confirmed previously reported Arctic warming trends.
"Compared to last summer, the water that flows from the Norwegian Sea to the Arctic has been an average 0.8 degrees Celsius warmer this summer," said expedition leader Ursula Schauer of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany. "This is in addition to the last two years already having been warmer than the previous 20 from which we have regular measurements."
During the expedition, biologists also discovered zooplankton species from the Norwegian Sea that were previously unrecorded in the northern latitudes.
Joined by researchers from the University of Bremen and the Polish Institute of Oceanology, the scientists tracked warm waters along the sea ice margin between Greenland and Spitsbergen in a quest to understand the climate change observed during the past decade in the Arctic.
Previous measurements indicated the occurrence of several strong warm pulses during the past decade. A combination of that and similar data has, for the first time, enabled reconstruction of an Atlantic heat pulse through the Norwegian Sea and far into the inner Arctic over several years.
