Abstract
This study examines ocean currents and an eddy in open water region of the western Arctic Ocean using drifting buoy systems during the 2013 R/V Mirai Arctic cruise (MR13-06). In the Canada Basin, four buoys were deployed around the southern jet stream of the Beaufort Gyre, where two were deployed near the jet and others were around an anticyclonic eddy that was found in the central Canada Basin. To capture accurate current velocity, a holey-sock drogue was set at 50 m in depth around which representative currents for the jet and eddy exist. The buoys movement revealed that the jet was along a pathway parallel and close to the shelfbreak of the northern Chukchi Sea shelf, while the eddy migrated along with the jet as it rotated clockwise. At a stationary observation point in the Chukchi Sea shelf, we focused on and investigated the heat exchanges between the atmosphere and ocean during a transition from summer to winter (10 to 26 September). In the program, two buoys were used to examine ocean currents at upper and lower layers over the shelf. According to the buoy movement, it is found that oceanic currents were dominated by an inertial oscillation on the shelf throughout the observation period. A survey revisited the same water mass suggested that the sea water was mixed and modified by entrainment due to surface wind forcing and shear flow around depth of the main pycnocline in the two layer system.
