EGU25-12510, updated on 15 Mar 2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-12510
EGU General Assembly 2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Future Changes in Arctic River Runoff and its Impact on the Ocean
Tahya Weiss-Gibbons1, Clark Pennelly1, Tricia Stadnyk2, and Paul Myers1
Tahya Weiss-Gibbons et al.
  • 1University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
  • 2University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada

Freshwater plays an important role in the Arctic Ocean, where stratification and circulation are dominated by salinity. River runoff is an important piece of the Arctic freshwater budget, and it is changing rapidly with climate change. River runoff into the Arctic Ocean has been increasing in both amount and temperature, a trend which is expected to continue into the future. We look at forcing a state of the art ocean model with future runoff projections for the Arctic Ocean, to understand how this increase in runoff temperature and flow impacts the changing Arctic. Runoff projections are produced using the A-HYPE hydrological model, over the Arctic drainage basin, giving both runoff and river temperature data. These are used to force a regional configuration of the Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO) framework 4.2, with a nested 1/12 degree Arctic Ocean. As opposed to traditional methods of linearly scaling runoff for future projections, combining hydrological model output with ocean models gives a more complete spatially and temporally varying picture of runoff. Changes in river runoff has implications for sea ice futures, circulation patterns, freshwater storage and release of freshwater to lower latitudes.

How to cite: Weiss-Gibbons, T., Pennelly, C., Stadnyk, T., and Myers, P.: Future Changes in Arctic River Runoff and its Impact on the Ocean, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-12510, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-12510, 2025.