The Arctic Ocean’s ice capped waters have been quiet for a long time now due to the fact that winds have been unable to ruffle the surface and stir things up. But now with the rapid loss of summer ice cover, things are changing and creating internal waves in the Arctic waters that could dramatically change the life there.

The Arctic Ocean is known to be very very quiet. Oceans like the Pacific or Atlantic can have density change s every few hours which indicate the passage of internal waves within the ocean keeping the oceans forever turbulent, fertile and unable to settle.

With all this new action in the Arctic it’s expected to bring deep water nutrients closer to the surface where with the sunlight they’ll feed summer phytoplankton blooms — forming a vast new foundation for the Arctic marine food web.

One of the big questions this will bring now is whether or not it could speed up the melting of the Arctic sea ice. The Arctic has a lot of very fresh; very cold water on top from melted ice and only about 100 meters below this is very salty, slightly warmer water. If internal waves become powerful enough to mix these waters, the warmer surface could accelerate the melting of sea ice. The Arctic is a very peculiar Ocean and for now it can be said with reasonable certainty, the Arctic is bound to become a place of grater seasonal extremes.