MOSCOW, May 29. /TASS/. Russian ocean studies experts made a year-round map of vortex activity in the Barents Sea's shallow part to understand better how warm and cold waters mixing up in the Arctic affect melting of the region's ice cover, press service of the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) said.

"The Arctic is warming up faster than other regions of the planet. The Barents Sea's ice cover has been shrinking at a record pace. Results of recent work show it is small vortices that are responsible for delivering heat from the depths to the ice sheet area. Determining their number is critically important for predicting the sea ice disappearance in summer," the press service quoted head of the Marine Polar Research Laboratory at the Marine Hydrophysical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Sevastopol) Igor Kozlov as saying.

According to the scientists, marine vortices in shallow waters of the northwestern Barents Sea mix water intensively, raising warm and salty Atlantic waters to the surface, accelerating ice melting and redistributing nutrients. For this reason, they have a huge impact on the climate of the Arctic and the entire planet as well as on various processes related to the functioning of local ecosystems.

Despite their important role for climate and ecology, until now, scientists have not had a full annual cycle of observations of these vortices in the Barents Sea. The reason is that in winter the Arctic area is often hidden by clouds, and conventional satellite optical sensors are unable to "see" the water surface through clouds or during the polar night. The Russian scientists have managed to bypass this problem by analyzing data from radars installed on European Sentinel-1A/B satellites.

The scientists have analyzed more than 3,000 high-resolution radar images obtained by these probes between January and December, 2018. In each image, the laboratory's leader and his colleagues identified vortices' structures by their specific spiral-shaped manifestations, and then they determined their type - cyclonic or anticyclonic, as well as their diameter, center coordinates, and whether they belonged to open water or to a marginal ice zone.

During the research, the scientists were able to detect more than 1,700 vortices in the marginal zone, where their radiuses ranged from 200m to 40km. They could find that the biggest share were rather small vortices, with a diameter of 2-4 kilometers, while even best ocean models had almost ignored their existence due to the small size and seasonal disturbances. Thus, the information, collected by the scientists, will be used to adjust these models, and to forecast more accurately how heat transfer in the Russian Arctic will be changing as it warms up.