Impact of increasing Antarctic ice-shelf melting on Southern Ocean hydrography

Antarctic Ice Sheet fertilises the Southern Ocean

Southern Ocean (SO) marine primary productivity (PP) is strongly influenced by the availability of iron in surface waters, which is thought to exert a significant control upon atmospheric CO2 concentrations on glacial/interglacial timescales. The zone bordering the Antarctic Ice Sheet exhibits high PP and seasonal plankton blooms in response to light and variations in iron availability. The sou...

Response of Southern Ocean circulation to global warming may enhance basal ice shelf melting around Antarctica

We investigate the large-scale oceanic features determining the future ice shelf–ocean interaction by analyzing global warming experiments in a coarse resolution climate model with a comprehensive ocean component. Heat and freshwater fluxes from basal ice shelf melting (ISM) are parameterized following Beckmann and Goosse [Ocean Model 5(2):157–170, 2003]. Melting sensitivities to the oceanic te...

Ice shelf changes on the Antarctic Peninsula

Southern Ocean warming and increased ice shelf basal melting in the 21st and 22nd centuries based on coupled ice-ocean finite-element modelling

We utilize a global finite element sea ice ice shelf ocean model (FESOM), focused on the Antarctic marginal seas, to analyse projections of ice shelf basal melting in a warmer climate. Ice shelf ocean interaction is described using a three-equation system with a diagnostic computation of temperature and salinity at the ice-ocean interface. A tetrahedral mesh with a minimum horizontal resolution...

Similar glacial and Holocene Southern Ocean hydrography

We present new Holocene and glacial dO data measured on planktonic foraminifera Neogloboquadrina pachyderma and benthic foraminifera Cibicidoides species from the Atlantic and Pacific sectors of the Southern Ocean in order to better understand its glacial hydrography. Combined with previously published data, the latitudinal dO distributions of these foraminifera show no appreciable difference d...