scholarly journals Glacial Meltwater Identification in the Amundsen Sea

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 933-954 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise C. Biddle ◽  
Karen J. Heywood ◽  
Jan Kaiser ◽  
Adrian Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Dissolved Oxygen ◽  
Deep Water ◽  
Ocean Model ◽  
Water Type ◽  
Ice Shelf ◽  
Amundsen Sea ◽  
Glacial Meltwater ◽  
Circumpolar Deep Water ◽  
Water Characteristics ◽  
Multiparameter Analysis

AbstractPine Island Ice Shelf, in the Amundsen Sea, is losing mass because of warm ocean waters melting the ice from below. Tracing meltwater pathways from ice shelves is important for identifying the regions most affected by the increased input of this water type. Here, optimum multiparameter analysis is used to deduce glacial meltwater fractions from water mass characteristics (temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen concentrations), collected during a ship-based campaign in the eastern Amundsen Sea in February–March 2014. Using a one-dimensional ocean model, processes such as variability in the characteristics of the source water masses on shelf and biological productivity/respiration are shown to affect the calculated apparent meltwater fractions. These processes can result in a false meltwater signature, creating misleading apparent glacial meltwater pathways. An alternative glacial meltwater calculation is suggested, using a pseudo–Circumpolar Deep Water endpoint and using an artificial increase in uncertainty of the dissolved oxygen measurements. The pseudo–Circumpolar Deep Water characteristics are affected by the under ice shelf bathymetry. The glacial meltwater fractions reveal a pathway for 2014 meltwater leading to the west of Pine Island Ice Shelf, along the coastline.

scholarly journals Tropical forcing of Circumpolar Deep Water Inflow and outlet glacier thinning in the Amundsen Sea Embayment, West Antarctica

2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (60) ◽  
pp. 19-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
E.J. Steig ◽  
Q. Ding ◽  
D.S. Battisti ◽  
A. Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Wind Stress ◽  
Deep Water ◽  
Reanalysis Data ◽  
Ocean Model ◽  
Tropical Pacific ◽  
Amundsen Sea ◽  
Outlet Glacier ◽  
Circumpolar Deep Water ◽  
Tropical Forcing ◽  
The North

AbstractOutlet glaciers draining the Antarctic ice sheet into the Amundsen Sea Embayment (ASE) have accelerated in recent decades, most likely as a result of increased melting of their ice-shelf termini by warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW). An ocean model forced with climate reanalysis data shows that, beginning in the early 1990s, an increase in westerly wind stress near the continental shelf edge drove an increase in CDW inflow onto the shelf. The change in local wind stress occurred predominantly in fall and early winter, associated with anomalous high sea-level pressure (SLP) to the north of the ASE and an increase in sea surface temperature (SST) in the central tropical Pacific. The SLP change is associated with geopotential height anomalies in the middle and upper troposphere, characteristic of a stationary Rossby wave response to tropical SST forcing, rather than with changes in the zonally symmetric circulation. Tropical Pacific warming similar to that of the 1990s occurred in the 1940s, and thus is a candidate for initiating the current period of ASE glacier retreat.

scholarly journals On the Role of Coastal Troughs in the Circulation of Warm Circumpolar Deep Water on Antarctic Shelves

2013 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre St-Laurent ◽  
John M. Klinck ◽  
Michael S. Dinniman
Keyword(s):  
Deep Water ◽  
Ice Sheets ◽  
Ocean Model ◽  
Mean Flow ◽  
Ice Shelf ◽  
Circumpolar Deep Water ◽  
Onshore Flow ◽  
Continental Shelves ◽  
Bellingshausen Sea

Abstract Oceanic exchanges across the continental shelves of Antarctica play an important role in biological systems and the mass balance of ice sheets. The focus of this study is on the mechanisms responsible for the circulation of warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) within troughs running perpendicular to the continental shelf. This is examined using process-oriented numerical experiments with an eddy-resolving (1 km) 3D ocean model that includes a static and thermodynamically active ice shelf. Three mechanisms that create a significant onshore flow within the trough are identified: 1) a deep onshore flow driven by the melt of the ice shelf, 2) interaction between the longshore mean flow and the trough, and 3) interaction between a Rossby wave along the shelf break and the trough. In each case the onshore flow is sufficient to maintain the warm temperatures underneath the ice shelf and basal melt rates of O(1 m yr−1). The third mechanism in particular reproduces several features revealed by moorings from Marguerite Trough (Bellingshausen Sea): the temperature maximum at middepth, a stronger intrusion on the downstream edge of the trough, and the appearance of warm anticyclonic anomalies every week. Sensitivity experiments highlight the need to properly resolve the small baroclinic radii of these regions (5 km on the shelf)—simulations at 3-km resolution cannot reproduce mechanism 3 and the associated heat transport.

scholarly journals Warm Circumpolar Deep Water at the Western Getz Ice Shelf Front, Antarctica

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 870-878 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. M. Assmann ◽  
E. Darelius ◽  
A. K. Wåhlin ◽  
T. W. Kim ◽  
S. H. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Deep Water ◽  
Ice Shelf ◽  
Circumpolar Deep Water

scholarly journals The role of Pine Island Glacier ice shelf basal channels in deep-water upwelling, polynyas and ocean circulation in Pine Island Bay, Antarctica

2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (60) ◽  
pp. 123-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth D. Mankoff ◽  
Stanley S. Jacobs ◽  
Slawek M. Tulaczyk ◽  
Sharon E. Stammerjohn
Keyword(s):  
Ocean Circulation ◽  
Deep Water ◽  
Open Water ◽  
Positive Temperature ◽  
Ice Shelf ◽  
Amundsen Sea ◽  
Buoyant Plumes ◽  
Surface Circulation ◽  
Glacier Ice ◽  
Fast Ice

AbstractSeveral hundred visible and thermal infrared satellite images of Antarctica’s southeast Amundsen Sea from 1986 to 2011, combined with aerial observations in 2009, show a strong inverse relation between prominent curvilinear surface depressions and the underlying basal morphology of the outer Pine Island Glacier ice shelf. Shipboard measurements near the calving front reveal positive temperature, salinity and current anomalies indicative of melt-laden, deep-water outflows near and above the larger channel termini. These buoyant plumes rise to the surface and are expressed as small polynyas in the sea ice and thermal signatures in the open water. The warm upwellings also trace the cyclonic surface circulation in Pine Island Bay. The satellite coverage suggests changing modes of ocean/ice interactions, dominated by leads along the ice shelf through 1999, fast ice and polynyas from 2000 to 2007, and larger areas of open water since 2008.

scholarly journals Circulation of modified Circumpolar Deep Water and basal melt beneath the Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctica

2015 ◽  
Vol 120 (4) ◽  
pp. 3098-3112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Herraiz-Borreguero ◽  
Richard Coleman ◽  
Ian Allison ◽  
Stephen R. Rintoul ◽  
Mike Craven ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Deep Water ◽  
East Antarctica ◽  
Ice Shelf ◽  
Circumpolar Deep Water ◽  
Amery Ice Shelf

scholarly journals Eddy-Resolving Model Estimate of the Cabbeling Effect on the Water Mass Transformation in the Southern Ocean

2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (8) ◽  
pp. 1288-1302 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Shogo Urakawa ◽  
Hiroyasu Hasumi
Keyword(s):  
Southern Ocean ◽  
Deep Water ◽  
Water Mass ◽  
Formation Rate ◽  
Ocean Model ◽  
Intermediate Water ◽  
Mode Water ◽  
Model Estimate ◽  
Circumpolar Deep Water ◽  
Water Mass Transformation

Abstract Cabbeling effect on the water mass transformation in the Southern Ocean is investigated with the use of an eddy-resolving Southern Ocean model. A significant amount of water is densified by cabbeling: water mass transformation rates are about 4 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) for transformation from surface/thermocline water to Subantarctic Mode Water (SAMW), about 7 Sv for transformation from SAMW to Antarctic Intermediate Water (AAIW), and about 5 Sv for transformation from AAIW to Upper Circumpolar Deep Water. These diapycnal volume transports occur around the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), where mesoscale eddies are active. The water mass transformation by cabbeling in this study is also characterized by a large amount of densification of Lower Circumpolar Deep Water (LCDW) into Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) (about 9 Sv). Large diapycnal velocity is found not only along the ACC but also along the coast of Antarctica at the boundary between LCDW and AABW. It is found that about 3 Sv of LCDW is densified into AABW by cabbeling on the continental slopes of Antarctica in this study. This densification is not small compared with observational and numerical estimates on the AABW formation rate, which ranges from 10 to 20 Sv.

Effects of glacial meltwater in the GISS coupled atmosphere-ocean model: 2. A bipolar seesaw in Atlantic Deep Water production

2001 ◽  
Vol 106 (D21) ◽  
pp. 27355-27365 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Rind ◽  
G. Russell ◽  
G. Schmidt ◽  
S. Sheth ◽  
D. Collins ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Deep Water ◽  
Ocean Model ◽  
Water Production ◽  
Glacial Meltwater

scholarly journals Brief communication: A submarine wall protecting the Amundsen Sea intensifies melting of neighboring ice shelves

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 2317-2324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Özgür Gürses ◽  
Vanessa Kolatschek ◽  
Qiang Wang ◽  
Christian Bernd Rodehacke
Keyword(s):  
Ocean Model ◽  
Warm Water ◽  
Ice Shelf ◽  
The West ◽  
Amundsen Sea ◽  
West Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
Ice Shelves ◽  
West Antarctic ◽  
Antarctic Continent ◽  
Subsurface Cavities

Abstract. Disintegration of ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea, in front of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, has the potential to cause sea level rise by inducing an acceleration of ice discharge from upstream grounded ice. Moore et al. (2018) proposed that using a submarine wall to block the penetration of warm water into the subsurface cavities of these ice shelves could reduce this risk. We use a global sea ice–ocean model to show that a wall shielding the Amundsen Sea below 350 m depth successfully suppresses the inflow of warm water and reduces ice shelf melting. However, these warm water masses get redirected towards neighboring ice shelves, which reduces the net effectiveness of the wall. The ice loss is reduced by 10 %, integrated over the entire Antarctic continent.

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