thermohaline circulation and Arctic ice, updated

Take a look at the diminished flow of multi-year sea ice through the Fram Strait as shown in the Yale video. The video portion on the multi-year ice loss is narrated by Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers, yet I would like to have the original source of the data, most likely the NISDC. [This video is also imbedded in a blog by Joe Romm on the Arctic Ice Death Spiral.] The scientists in the video point to the "positive feedback" of an open water Arctic Ocean in summer,  the open water would absorb the sun's energy and accumulate heat during the days of nearly twenty-four hours of sunlight. The white ice cap that we are losing so abruptly had reflected light back into space; the dark open water does little of that.  That's an important point, within the scope of scientific inference.

We need to connect more, and the scientific "dots" already exist. 

What I want us to understand - in short - is that an ice-free Arctic could affect "the ability of the ocean’s thermohaline circulation to assume more than one mode of operation (Broecker)" and "The strength of the thermohaline cell will be shown to depend on the amount of sea ice transported from the Arctic to the Greenland Sea and further to the subpolar gyre (Mauritzen, C. and S. Häkkinen)."

The thermohaline circulation is the global movement of ocean currents.  
Arctic sea ice reaching the Greenland Sea has a major effect on thermohaline circulation.
Without sea ice, we are indeed in uncharted waters.
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Some sources:
Mauritzen, C. and S. Häkkinen (1997), Influence of sea ice on the thermohaline circulation in the Arctic‐North Atlantic Ocean, Geophys. Res. Lett., 24(24), 3257–3260, doi:10.1029/97GL03192.
Abstract:
A fully prognostic coupled ocean‐ice model is used to study the sensitivity of the overturning cell of the Arctic‐North‐Atlantic system to sea ice forcing. The strength of the thermohaline cell will be shown to depend on the amount of sea ice transported from the Arctic to the Greenland Sea and further to the subpolar gyre. The model produces a 2–3 Sv increase of the meridional circulation cell at 25N (at the simulation year 15) corresponding to a decrease of 800 km³ in the sea ice export from the Arctic. Previous modeling studies suggest that interannual and decadal variability in sea ice export of this magnitude is realistic, implying that sea ice induced variability in the overturning cell can reach 5–6 Sv from peak to peak.

Science 28 November 1997:
Vol. 278 no. 5343 pp. 1582-1588
DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5343.1582
Thermohaline Circulation, the Achilles Heel of Our Climate System: Will Man-Made CO2 Upset the Current Balance?
Wallace S. Broecker
The author is at The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA.
Abstract
During the last glacial period, Earth’s climate underwent frequent large and abrupt global changes. This behavior appears to reflect the ability of the ocean’s thermohaline circulation to assume more than one mode of operation. The record in ancient sedimentary rocks suggests that similar abrupt changes plagued the Earth at other times. The trigger mechanism for these reorganizations may have been the antiphasing of polar insolation associated with orbital cycles. Were the ongoing increase in atmospheric CO2 levels to trigger another such reorganization, it would be bad news for a world striving to feed 11 to 16 billion people.