G.W.K. Moore

University of Toronto | U of T · Department of Physics

The Arctic System Reanalysis version 1 (ASRv1), a high-resolution regional assimilation of model output, observations, and satellite data across the mid- and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and the global European Centre for Medium Range Forecasting Interim Reanalysis (ERAI) are compared to atmospheric observations for the period Decembe...

We describe the recent occurrence of a region of diminished sea ice cover or ‘notch’ offshore of the Kangerdlugssuaq Fiord, the site of the largest tidewater glacier along Greenland's southeast coast. The notch's location is consistent with a topographically forced flux of warm water towards the fiord and the decrease of the sea ice cover is shown...

Cape Farewell, Greenland’s southernmost point, is characterized by a number of low-level jets that are the result of topographic flow distortion associated with passing extra-tropical cyclones. The heavy seas associated with these wind events are a hazard to maritime traffic in the region. In addition, the air-sea heat flux associated with these we...

Baffin Bay is located between Greenland and several islands of the Canadian Arctic, providing a conduit for the downstream transport of ice and freshwater to the North Atlantic via Davis Strait. Using satellite observations from Sentinel‐1, the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, and CryoSat‐2, we estimated the sea ice export through Davis Strait and w...

During the winter season, stratification in the central Labrador Sea is eroded by surface heat fluxes causing convective overturning exceeding depths of 2km. This is one of the few locations globally in which deep convection occurs, making it an important feature of the climate system and ocean ventilation. Large-scale atmospheric circulation patte...

The Beaufort Sea High is a high‐pressure system located in the Beaufort Sea that influences ocean circulation in the western Arctic known as the Beaufort Gyre. Wrangel Island, located in the western Chukchi Sea, typically experiences easterly sea ice motion due to the Beaufort Gyre. We find that under these climatological conditions, moving ice is...

Nares Strait, situated between northwest Greenland and Ellesmere Island is a major sea ice export path from the Arctic Ocean. One of the narrowest parts of the strait — Kennedy Channel — is host to several islands. These obstacles’ impact on the ice flow along the Strait has yet to be investigated. Here we show that during autumn, these islands can...

The Northeast Water Polynya is a significant annually recurring summertime Arctic polynya, located off the coast of Northeast Greenland. It is important for marine wildlife and affects local atmospheric and oceanic processes. In this study, over 40 years of observational and reanalysis products (ERA5 and ORAS5) are analyzed to characterize the poly...

The effect of anthropogenic climate change on extreme near-surface wind speeds is uncertain. Observed trends are weak and difficult to disentangle from internal variability, and model projections disagree on the sign and magnitude of trends. Standard coarse-resolution climate models represent the fine structures of relevant physical phenomena such...

Nares Strait, situated between northwest Greenland and Ellesmere Island, is an important conduit for exporting sea ice from the Arctic, especially thick multi-year ice undergoing an accelerated loss compared to other ice types. This export is impacted by ice arches that can form along the Strait and remain stable for months at a time resulting in a...

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) directly heats the middle tropospheric atmosphere, and accurate simulation of its surface temperature is of great concern for improving climatic prediction and projection capabilities, but climate models always exhibit a cold bias. Based on the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models and in-situ observa...

Plain Language Summary Arctic sea‐ice variability is dually related to air/ocean temperatures and dynamic forces (wind patterns and ocean currents). While long‐term basin‐averaged temperature trends (i.e., Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) tend to influence variability over decades, cyclical wind patterns (e.g., Arctic Oscillation), may instead in...

The Beaufort Sea High is a high-pressure system located in the Beaufort Sea and influences ocean circulation in the western Arctic known as the Beaufort Gyre. Wrangel Island, located in the western Chukchi Sea, typically experiences easterly sea ice motion due to the Beaufort Gyre. We find that under these climatological conditions, moving ice is b...

Rapid warming due to human-caused climate change is reshaping the Arctic, enhanced by physical processes that cause the Arctic to warm more quickly than the global average, collectively called Arctic amplification. Observations over the past 40+ years show a transition to a wetter Arctic, with seasonal shifts and widespread disturbances influencing...

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), Arctic Oscillation (AO), and related North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) have been linked to multidecadal, decadal, and/or interannual sea-ice variability in the arctic, but their relative influences are still under evaluation. While instrumental AMO and reliable AO records are available since the mid-1800s...

Nares Strait, the waterway that separates northwest Greenland from Ellesmere Island, is a major pathway along which sea ice leaves the Arctic, including the planet’s oldest and thickest sea ice that is experiencing an accelerated loss. Ice arches that develop during the winter at the Strait’s northern or southern terminus can remain stable for mont...

Nares Strait and the channels of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA) act as conduits for sea ice export from the Arctic Ocean but have never been directly compared. Here, we perform such a comparison for both the sea ice area and volume fluxes from October 2016 to December 2021. Nares Strait provided the largest average seasonal (October through...

Extreme near-surface wind speeds in cities can have major societal impacts but are not well represented in climate models. Despite this, large-scale dynamics in the free troposphere, which models resolve better, could provide reliable constraints on local extreme winds. This study identifies synoptic circulations associated with midlatitude extreme...

The variability of the northern westerlies has been considered as one of the key elements for modern and past climate evolution. Their multiscale behavior and underlying control mechanisms, however, are incompletely understood, owing to the complex dynamics of Atlantic sea-level pressures. Here, we present a multi-annually resolved record of the we...

A delay in autumn sea ice formation is an important consequence of Arctic Amplification. Baffin Bay is one such region impacted by delayed ice formation, though spatiotemporal analyses to date have not detailed the evolution and drivers of such autumn ice changes. In this study, we document abrupt Baffin Bay sea ice cover changes in the key transit...

Nares Strait is the long and narrow strait bounded by steep topography that connects the Arctic Ocean's Lincoln Sea to the North Atlantic's Baffin Bay. The winds that blow along the strait play an important role in modulating ice and water exports from the Arctic Ocean as well as in helping to establish the Arctic's largest and most productive poly...

The Arctic Ocean has seen a remarkable reduction in sea ice coverage, thickness and age since the 1980s. These changes are most pronounced in the Beaufort Sea, with a transition around 2007 from a regime dominated by multi-year sea ice to one with large expanses of open water during the summer. Using satellite-based observations of sea ice, an atmo...

Dense water masses formed in the Nordic Seas flow across the Greenland-Scotland Ridge and contribute substantially to the lower limb of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Originally considered an important source of dense water, the Iceland Sea gained renewed interest when the North Icelandic Jet — a current transporting dense water f...

Water mass transformation in the Nordic and Barents Seas, triggered by air-sea heat fluxes, is an integral component of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). These regions are undergoing rapid warming, associated with a retreat in ice cover. Here we present an analysis covering 1950−2020 of the spatiotemporal variability of the ai...

The Congo Basin, being one of the major basins in the tropics, is important to the global climate, yet its hydrology is perhaps the least understood. Although various reanalysis/analysis datasets have been used to improve our understanding of the basin’s hydroclimate, they have been historically difficult to validate due to sparse in situ measureme...

The planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) is a diagnostic field related to the effective heat capacity of the lower atmosphere, both stable and convective, and it constrains motion in this layer as well as impacts surface warming. Here, we used radiosonde data from five icebreaker cruises to the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas during both spring and fal...

Plain Language Summary A polynya is an area of open water in a region that is normally ice covered. The absence of ice allows for the exchange of energy between the atmosphere and ocean as well as supporting a complex ecosystem. The Last Ice Area (LIA) is the region north of Greenland and Ellesmere Island that contains the Arctic's oldest and thick...

Plain Language Summary Baffin Bay exports cold and fresh Arctic Water to the North Atlantic while receiving northward flowing warm and saline Atlantic Water. This warm Atlantic Water has been shown to drive the retreat of tidewater glaciers. Periods of enhanced Atlantic Water transport into Baffin Bay have been observed. The oceanic processes that...

The Arctic Ocean’s Wandel Sea is the easternmost sector of the Last Ice Area, where thick, old sea ice is expected to endure longer than elsewhere. Nevertheless, in August 2020 the area experienced record-low sea ice concentration. Here we use satellite data and sea ice model experiments to determine what caused this record sea ice minimum. In our...

Nares Strait is a major pathway along which multi-year sea ice leaves the Arctic, an ice class that has seen a recent dramatic reduction in extent. The winds that blow along the strait play an important role in modulating this ice export as well as in establishing the Arctic’s largest and most productive polynya, the North Water, that forms at its...

Starting in January 2020, the novel coronavirus, now known as acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS‐CoV‐2) and the disease that it causes (COVID‐19) has had significant impacts on human health, the environment, and the economy globally. The rapid lockdown that occurred as well as its well documented timing allows for an unprecedented opportu...

From late‐summer 2013 to late‐summer 2014, a total of 20 moorings were maintained on the eastern Chukchi Sea shelf as part of five independent field programs. This provided the opportunity to analyze an extensive set of timeseries to obtain a broad view of the mean and seasonally varying hydrography and circulation over the course of the year. Year...

Nares Strait is a major pathway along which multi-year sea ice leaves the Arctic, an ice class that seen a recent dramatic reduction in extent. The winds that blow along the strait play an important role in modulating this ice export as well as in establishing the Arctic’s largest and most productive polynya, the North Water, that forms at its sout...

The ice arches that usually develop at the northern and southern ends of Nares Strait play an important role in modulating the export of Arctic Ocean multi-year sea ice. The Arctic Ocean is evolving towards an ice pack that is younger, thinner, and more mobile and the fate of its multi-year ice is becoming of increasing interest. Here, we use sea i...

Moore, G.W.K., Paolo Cristofanelli, Paolo Bonasoni, Gian Pietro Verza, and J.L. Semple. Was an avalanche swarm responsible for the devastation at Mount Everest Base Camp during the April 2015 Nepal earthquake? High Alt Med Biol. 21:352-359, 2020. Introduction: An avalanche triggered by an earthquake on April 25, 2015, struck the Mount Everest Base...

The Iceland and Greenland Seas are a crucial region for the climate system, being the headwaters of the lower limb of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Investigating the atmosphere–ocean–ice processes in this region often necessitates the use of meteorological reanalyses—a representation of the atmospheric state based on the assimila...

The dense outflow through Denmark Strait is the largest contributor to the lower limb of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, yet a description of the full velocity field across the strait remains incomplete. Here we analyze a set of 22 shipboard hydrographic–velocity sections occupied along the Látrabjarg transect at the Denmark Strait...

Recent winters have been unique due to the rapid and extreme cooling of the subpolar North Atlantic. Here, we present a novel view on its causes and consequences. Combining in‐situ observations with remote sensing and atmospheric reanalysis data, we show that increased freshening of the subpolar region gives rise to a faster surface cooling in fall...

The structure, transport, and seasonal variability of the West Greenland boundary current system near Cape Farewell are investigated using a high-resolution mooring array deployed from 2014-2018. The boundary current system is comprised of three components: the West Greenland Coastal Current, which advects cold and fresh Upper Polar Water (UPW); th...

A temperature and salinity hydrographic profile climatology is assembled, evaluated for data quality, and analyzed to assess changes of the Bering and Chukchi Sea continental shelves over seasonal to century-long time scales. The climatology informs description of the spatial distribution and temporal evolution of water masses over the two shelves,...

Abstract The frequency and magnitude of extreme summer temperature events in the United States have increased in the past few decades. Long‐term exposure to extreme summer temperatures can be detrimental to human health, due to potential risks of dehydration and thermoregulation strains on the cardiovascular system, which may often lead to heat‐rel...

The United Kingdom (UK) is experiencing rapid growth in wind farm development, primarily in the south as well as in offshore regions. As such, reliable long‐term wind statistics are integral in planning future development. Given the scarcity of in situ data, atmospheric reanalyses are beginning to be used for this purpose. However, most reanalyses...

Surface pressure reflects the deep structure of the overlying atmosphere, and is recognized as an indicator of climate change. In this study, observed surface pressure at 71 stations over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) during 1979–2013 is analyzed and compared with monthly means from multiple reanalyses (NCEP1, NCEP2, ERA-Interim, MERRA and JRA55). Durin...

The Arctic Ocean's oldest and thickest sea ice lies along the ~2,000 km arc from the western Canadian Arctic Archipelago to the northern coast of Greenland. Climate models suggest that this region will be the last to lose its perennial ice cover, thus providing an important refuge for ice‐dependent species. However, remarkably little is known about...

The oceanographic response and atmospheric forcing associated with downwelling along the Alaskan Beaufort Sea shelf/slope is described using mooring data collected from August 2002 to September 2004, along with meteorological time series, satellite data, and reanalysis fields. In total, 55 downwelling events are identified with peak occurrence in J...

Data from a late spring survey of the northeast Chukchi Sea are used to investigate various aspects of newly ventilated winter water (NVWW). More than 96% of the water sampled on the shelf was NVWW, the saltiest (densest) of which tended to be in the main flow pathways on the shelf. Nearly all of the hydrographic profiles on the shelf displayed a t...

Historical reanalyses that span more than a century are needed for a wide range of studies, from understanding large‐scale climate trends to diagnosing the impacts of individual historical extreme weather events. The Twentieth Century Reanalysis (20CR) Project is an effort to fill this need. It is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric A...

A coordinated atmosphere-ocean research project, centered on a rare wintertime field campaign to the Iceland and Greenland Seas, seeks to determine the location and causes of dense water formation by cold-air outbreaks. The Iceland Greenland Seas Project (IGP) is a coordinated atmosphere-ocean research program investigating climate processes in the...

Offshore Antarctic polynyas—large openings in the winter sea ice cover—are thought to be maintained by a rapid ventilation of deep-ocean heat through convective mixing. These rare phenomena may alter abyssal properties and circulation, yet their formation mechanisms are not well understood. Here we demonstrate that concurrent upper-ocean preconditi...

Data from a year-long mooring array across the shelfbreak/upper-slope of the Chukchi Sea are used to describe and quantify the circulation and water masses of the region. The timeseries revealed the year-round existence of the eastward-flowing shelfbreak jet and, seaward of this, the westward-flowing Chukchi Slope Current. In the mean the slope cur...

Ground-breaking measurements from the ocean observatories initiative Irminger Sea surface mooring (60°N, 39°30′W) are presented that provide the first in situ characterization of multiwinter surface heat exchange at a high latitude North Atlantic site. They reveal strong variability (December 2014 net heat loss nearly 50% greater than December 2015...

Six years of mooring data from the Alaskan Beaufort Sea slope, together with meteorological observations and reanalysis fields, are used to quantify the occurrence of wind-driven upwelling and the associated atmospheric forcing. The canonical upwelling event, composited from 115 individual events, reveals that when the easterly wind is strongest th...

During late February and early March 2018, an unusual polynya was observed off the north coast of Greenland. This period was also notable for the occurrence of a sudden stratospheric warming. Here we use satellite and in situ data, a reanalysis and an ice-ocean model to document the evolution of the polynya and its synoptic forcing. We show that it...

Hydrographic measurements from ships, autonomous profiling floats, and instrumented seals over the period 1986-2016 are used to examine the temporal variability in open-ocean convection in the Greenland Sea during winter. This process replenishes the deep ocean with oxygen and is central to maintaining its thermohaline properties. The deepest and d...

One of the most dramatic indicators of climate change is the reduction in the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice that has resulted in an increase in wind-driven sea ice mobility. During April and May 2017, satellite observations indicated that the ice arch that forms between Nares Strait and the Lincoln Sea collapsed. Typically, this collapse o...

Objective It is well known that climate variability and trends have an impact on human morbidity and mortality, especially during the winter. However, there are only a handful of studies that have undertaken quantitative investigations into this impact. We evaluate the association between the UK winter asthma mortality data to a well-established fe...

Warm subtropical-origin Atlantic water flows northward across the Greenland-Scotland Ridge into the Nordic Seas, where it relinquishes heat to the atmosphere and gradually transforms into dense Atlantic-origin water. Returning southward along east Greenland, this water mass is situated beneath a layer of cold, fresh surface water and sea ice. Here...

The North Water polynya (NOW), one of the largest and most productive of Arctic polynyas, is situated just downwind of Smith Sound, the southern terminus of Nares Strait. The high topography along the narrow strait results in the common occurrence of high speed northerly flow that is accelerated through Smith Sound. The resulting divergence of the...

The winter Arctic atmosphere is under the influence of two very different circulation systems: extratropical cyclones travel along the primary North Atlantic storm track from Iceland toward the eastern Arctic, while the western Arctic is characterized by a quasi-stationary region of high pressure known as the Beaufort High. The winter (January thro...