Imagine you're putting together a giant 1,000-piece puzzle. But you're missing 400 pieces, so how do you assemble it and figure out what it depicts?
Simply put, this is the challenge when it comes to fresh water in the Arctic Ocean. To predict climate change, we need to understand the freshwater in the Arctic better, as water from rivers, ice sheets, glaciers, and permafrost in places like Canada, Siberia, and Greenland affects the temperature and salinity of the ocean, as well as the ocean currents that transport warm water from the equator northward in the Atlantic.
"The Arctic is in many ways a benchmark for Earth's climate, and climate changes are happening much faster in the Arctic than elsewhere on the planet. Freshwater plays a significant role, but we don't actually know what it will mean because we don't have an overview of how much freshwater flows out and what happens to it," says Professor Ole Baltazar Andersen from DTU Space.
Satellites utilized in research
He leads the Arcfresh project, which aims to map the freshwater in the Arctic regions. The project is supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) and consists of 11 partners from six countries headed by DTU. By using observations from over 20 different climate satellites, they hope to uncover where the freshwater comes from and where it ends up.
According to Ole Baltazar Andersen, we only have data on about 60% of the freshwater in and out of the Arctic so far.
"But that means we have no idea what happens to the other 40% of the waters. At the same time, large parts of the Arctic Ocean are unmeasurable for much of the year because they are covered by ice, but now that satellite technology has improved significantly, we can start putting the pieces of the puzzle together," says Ole Baltazar Andersen.
