The Facebook post of Levon Azizyan, director of the Center for Hydrometeorology and Monitoring. "New evidence for the Atlanticization of the Arctic Ocean has been obtained
In the early 2020s, an international team of scientists reconstructed the warming history of the Arctic Ocean at its entrance, between Greenland and Spitsbergen. salt water has penetrated there.This phenomenon is called Atlanticization. Ocean temperatures have risen by about 2° since 1900. As a result, sea ice has retreated and salinity has increased over the decades.
In 2024, the international biological company BIOCAL, led by the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technologies of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), presented new evidence of Arctic Atlanticization. Moreover, marine ecosystems and species distribution in the Arctic region are already changing.
The oceanographic vessel Sarmiento de Gamboa sailed from Vigo, Spain to Reykjavik, covering the Azores archipelago (subtropical) and the Spitsbergen region (polar) to collect data. In this way, they were able to analyze the North Atlantic and the South Arctic.
The expedition collected water and sediment samples and conducted experiments on board to assess the biodiversity and biogeography of marine life and their role in the carbon cycle. allowed the team to gather evidence on the physicochemical characteristics of water and pelagic (all open ocean areas) fish ecosystems about the impact of Atlanticization.
It is already known that climate change leads to warming, acidification, ocean stratification and loss of oxygen. The implications of these impacts on biodiversity, particularly at the food chain level, remain to be explored.”
