The recent sea-ice reduction in the Arctic Ocean is not spatially uniform, but is disproportionally large around the Northwind
Ridge and Chukchi Plateau compared to elsewhere in the Canada Basin. In the Northwind Ridge region, Pacific Summer Water (PSW)
delivered from the Bering Sea occupies the subsurface layer. The spatial distribution of warm PSW shows a quite similar pattern
to the recent ice retreat, suggesting the influence of PSW on the sea-ice reduction. To understand the regionality of the
recent ice retreat, we examine the dynamics and timing of the delivery of the PSW into this region. Here, we adopt a two-layer
linearized potential vorticity equation to investigate the behavior of Rossby waves in the presence of a topographic discontinuity
in the high latitude ocean. The analytical results show a quite different structure from those of mid-latitude basins due
to the small value of β. Incident barotropic waves excited by the sea-ice motion with large annual variation can be scattered
into both barotropic and baroclinic modes at the discontinuity. Since the scattered baroclinic Rossby wave with annual frequency
cannot propagate freely, a strong baroclinic current near the topographic discontinuity is established. The seasonal variation
of current near the topographic discontinuity would cause a kind of selective switching system for shelf water transport into
the basin. In our simple analytical model, the enhanced northward transport of summer water and reduced northward transport
of winter water are well demonstrated. The present study indicates that these basic dynamics imply that a strengthening of
the surface forcing during winter in the Canada Basin could cause sea-ice reduction in the Western Arctic through the changes
of underlying Pacific Summer Water. 相似文献