Arctic Ocean flushing and its climate implications

Arctic Ocean flushing and its climate implications

This is a quote from the reference listed below it:

Today, the Beaufort Gyre holds as much freshwater as all of the Great Lakes combined, and its continuing clockwise swirl is preventing this enormous volume of ice and cold, fresh water from flushing into the North Atlantic Ocean. But, scientists say, the gyre will inevitably weaken and reverse direction, and when it does it could expel a massive amount of icy fresh water into the North Atlantic. Polar ocean

https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-a-wayward-arctic-current-could-cool-the-climate-in-europe

I have known about the effects of the 285 billion tons of freshwater melting from Greenland (because of the melting of the ice sheet) for about a decade, however I only recently heard about the Beaufort gyre, as indicated in the reference above. What is very very different about this phenomenon compared to the effect of the melting of Greenland is that it could happen in just a year or two?!
in just a year or two?!

I have been following all the feedback loop mechanisms on earth as they have been discovered. Here is my partial list:

• As the Arctic tundra thaws, There will be a pulse of methane released as previously frozen materials begin to decay;
• The shallow floor of the Siberian sea and continental shelves all over the Arctic will eventually also start to contribute to this pulse of methane that will be coming out of the renewed biological decay of previously frozen sediments;
• Methane hydrate deposits which are present on all of the continental slopes would become destabilized by increasing temperatures in the ocean; in fact it has been shown that the ocean is warming down to a depth of at least 700 m, which overlaps with the upper end of the methane hydrate stability zone;
•  As Arctic Ocean ice is reduced, the amount of solar energy directly injected into the Arctic and Arctic Ocean will increase;
• Increasing temperature and the clearing of forests will result in dramatically increased methane production from deep Northern temperate soils as well.

All these other above mechanisms result in a contribution to methane production over centuries at least. The Beaufort Sea gyre stopping would have its effect over maybe a decade and possibly quite a bit less than that. It is feasible for the entire Arctic Ocean to flush out in only a few years. If all the multiyear ice is gone the summer thaw will happen much quicker, resulting in substantial increase in the Arctic temperature as well as the complex effects due to all that fresh water entering The Atlantic Ocean. The above referenced article is an extremely important one for everyone concerned about the climate in Europe to read.

RWF