On the freshening of the northwestern Weddell Sea continental shelf

For the last five decades the Antarctic Peninsula faces the strongest atmospheric warming on Earth with severe consequences for its glaciers, ice shelves, sea ice cover, and the surrounding marginal seas. We analyzed hydrographic data from the northwestern Weddell Sea continental shelf of three aust...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hellmer, Hartmut, Huhn, O., Gomis, D., Timmermann, Ralph, Schröder, Michael
Format: Conference Object
Language:unknown
Published: 2010
Subjects:
Antarctic
The Antarctic
Antarctic Peninsula
Weddell Sea
Austral
Bransfield Strait
Weddell
Antarc*
Ice Shelf
Ice Shelves
Sea ice
Online Access:https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/22663/
https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.35333
Description
Summary:For the last five decades the Antarctic Peninsula faces the strongest atmospheric warming on Earth with severe consequences for its glaciers, ice shelves, sea ice cover, and the surrounding marginal seas. We analyzed hydrographic data from the northwestern Weddell Sea continental shelf of three austral winters (1989, 1997, and 2006) and two summers following the last winter cruise. The whole water column north of 66S freshened by ~0.1between the winters of the 17-year period, replaced by deep waters of the Central Bransfield Strait Basin every summer. The discussion of the causes for the salinity decrease favors the increased input of glacial melt from underneath Larsen C Ice Shelf. However, the 2-m/yr melt rate, necessary for a year-by-year freshening, could be reduced to 0.38 - 1.33 m/yr due to a recent (modeled) increase of precipitation and a retreat of the sea ice cover in the northwestern Weddell Sea.

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