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Seasonal and Interannual Variability of Bering Strait Throughflow from AO-FVCOM and Observation

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Abstract

A high-resolution Arctic Ocean-Finite Volume Community Ocean Model (AO-FVCOM) and observational current data from 14 mooring stations in Bering Strait and surrounding regions between 1990 and 2015 were used to study the seasonal and in-terannual variability of Bering Strait throughflow (BST). AO-FVCOM represented the BST with a climatological northward flux of 1.06Sv, which was close to the observational mean of 0.94 + 0.26Sv. From the model results, the strongest volume flux was in summer, approximately 45% larger than that in winter. Interannual variability of BST was also indicated in the model results, and the maximum and minimum annual mean transports are in 2007 and 2012, respectively. AO-FVCOM showed larger differences from the observations in 2000, 2002, and 2015 than in other years, which may be related to the limitation of atmospheric forcing for the model. According to the driving mechanisms of BST, sea level difference (SLD) across the strait dominates the northward volume transport, and local wind is also important in forcing the seasonal variability of the BST and SLD patterns to change the BST indirectly.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Program on Key Basic Research Project of China (No. 2015CB95 3902), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41276197 and 41706210), and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016 YFC1400903). The authors are grateful to Dr. Rebecca Woodgate and other scientists for making the mooring data accessible to the public on the Internet (see psc.apl.washington.edu/BeringStrait.html). The authors also appreciate the support of various institutions with programs and grants to deploy mooring and achieve data. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for helping us to improve the quality of our manuscript.

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  1. College of Marine Sciences, Shanghai Ocean University, Shanghai, 201306, China

    Yongfei Deng, Guoping Gao, Yu Zhang & Changsheng Chen

  2. College of Ocean Science and Engineering, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, 201306, China

    Guoping Gao

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  1. Yongfei Deng
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Correspondence to Guoping Gao.

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Deng, Y., Gao, G., Zhang, Y. et al. Seasonal and Interannual Variability of Bering Strait Throughflow from AO-FVCOM and Observation. J. Ocean Univ. China 18, 615–625 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-019-3906-6

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