LONG TERM GOALS My long-term goals are to understand the mechanisms of, and the variability in, exchanges between the shelves and interior Arctic Ocean. These exchanges are important in establishing the circulation, thermohaline, and potential vorticity structure of the Arctic Ocean. They are also crucial in the maintenance of the Arctic Ocean ice pack and therefore they potentially influence arctic climate. These goals underlie my motivation to: 1. provide an observationally based indication

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... the variability of the Arctic shelf-basin system, with an emphasis on the Chukchi and Beaufort seas; 2. understand the mechanisms of shelf-basin exchange and contribute to the development of future observational strategies based on this understanding; 3. promote comparison of models to observations by providing patterns and statistics from observations that are useful in model evaluation. OBJECTIVES This project is a retrospective study that uses existing data to address: 1. The variability of the shelf sources of the Western Arctic (particularly the Chukchi Sea) and the causes of that variability; 2. The principal mechanisms of exchange across the shelf and slope, with bounds on the rates; 3. The background circulation over the shelf, slope, and adjacent abyssal plain and their relation to shelf-basin exchange; 4. Secondary circulations over the shelf, slope, and adjacent abyssal plain and their variability. What are the sources of the water masses encountered along the slope; 5. Freshwater processing and transport over the shelf.