The Freshwater Budget of the Arctic Ocean

Compared to our other oceans that are dominated by wind‐driven circulation derived from planetary motion and heating, the Arctic Ocean is the only one that receives enough of a freshwater input to determine its properties and circulation. In essence, the Arctic Ocean is unique—in this, as it is in so many other ways.The new U.S. multi‐agency SEARCH report (http://psc.apl.washington.edu/search_plan/Science_Plan_9.html) warns us that “it is alarmingly clear that a complex suite of significant, interrelated atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial changes has occurred in the Arctic in recent decades.” These changes may be the first large‐scale early warning of greenhouse warming.