Freshwater pond grows in Arctic Ocean

Science News : Although fresh water has always mixed with salt water as glaciers melt and rivers empty into oceans, researchers report that they have been studying a large expanse of the Arctic Ocean where such sea-ice melt and river inflows have effectively pooled with little mixing for the past dozen years. An unusual and persistent pattern of clockwise winds has corralled at least 7500 cubic kilometers of fresh water within the Beaufort Gyre off northern Canada, reports Laura de Steur, a physical oceanographer with the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research in Texel. The freshwater pool is roughly twice the volume of Africa’s Lake Victoria, one of the largest freshwater bodies in the world. The concern is that a large release of fresh water into the north Atlantic Ocean could alter the flow of the North Atlantic Current, which could lead to a cooling of winter temperatures in portions of the Northern Hemisphere.