Ocean glider observations of iceberg-enhanced biological production in the northwestern Weddell Sea

• Published in: Geophysical Research Letters
• Main Authors: Biddle, Louise C., Kaiser, Jan, Heywood, Karen J., Thompson, Andrew F., Jenkins, Adrian
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: American Geophysical Union 2015
• Subjects: Antarctic; Iceberg; Production; Gliders; Southern Ocean; The Antarctic; Weddell; Weddell Sea; Antarc*; Antarctica; Iceberg*
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1002/2014GL062850

Icebergs affect local biological production around Antarctica. We used an ocean glider to observe the effects of a large iceberg that was advected by the Antarctic Slope Current along the continental slope in the northwestern Weddell Sea in early 2012. The high-resolution glider data reveal a pronounced effect of the iceberg on ocean properties, with oxygen concentrations of (13 ± 4) μmol kg^(−1) higher than levels in surrounding waters, which are most likely due to positive net community production. This response was confined to three areas of water in the direct vicinity of the iceberg track, each no larger than 2  km^2. Our findings suggest that icebergs have an impact on Antarctic production presumably through local micronutrient injections, on a scale smaller than typical satellite observations of biological production in the Southern Ocean. © 2014 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Received 11 DEC 2014; Accepted 20 DEC 2014; Accepted article online 28 DEC 2014; Published online 27 JAN 2015. The GENTOO project and glider deployments were supported by NERC Antarctic Funding Initiative grant NE/H01439X/1. L.C.B. was supported by a NERC PhD studentship at UEA. We thank ship crew, officers, and scientific party of cruise JR255 on board RRS James Clark Ross. The data for this paper are available from the British Oceanographic Data Centre. We thank Robert Raiswell and John Helly for constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper. The Editor thanks Rob Raiswell and John Helly for their assistance in evaluating this paper. Published - Biddle_et_al-2015-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf Supplemental Material - grl52488-sup-0001-FigureS1.doc