Objectives and work plan

The objectives of the proposal are to determine the heat flux into the Arctic Ocean and the freshwater flux by sea ice and water from the Arctic Ocean into the Nordic Seas in order to identify and model the processes which cause the fluxes to vary on interannual and longer time scales and to identify a minimum set of choke point arrays which characterise the flow conditions to sufficient accuracy to estimate the flux variability and thus become a contribution to the a global ocean and climate observing system.

The workplan agreed upon by the ASOF-N consortium is aimed at

• measuring time-series of ocean fluxes between the Arctic and the Atlantic which have greatest bearing on the overturning rate of the thermohaline "conveyor"
  
  
• proposing a design for an optimised array to make the longer-term decadal measurements needed to understand and monitor ocean-atmosphere interaction on climate time-scales in the North Atlantic

To reach our aim, the workplan consists of six groups of activities (observations, modelling, instrument-development, system design, data management and synthesis) grouped into six workpackages, which structure the project into manageable units.