Origin of Circumpolar Deep Water intruding onto the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Sea continental shelves

• Main Authors: Nakayama, Yoshihiro, Menemenlis, Dimitris, Zhang, Hong, Schodlok, Michael, Rignot, Eric
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: eScholarship, University of California 2018
• Subjects: Life Below Water; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Bellingshausen Sea; Antarc*; Ice Shelves
• Online Access: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9481m4wh

Melting of West Antarctic ice shelves is enhanced by Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) intruding onto the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas (ABS) continental shelves. Despite existing studies of cross-shelf and on-shelf CDW transports, CDW pathways onto the ABS originating from further offshore have never been investigated. Here, we investigate CDW pathways onto the ABS using a regional ocean model. Simulated CDW tracers from a zonal section across 67°S (S04P) circulate along the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) and Ross Gyre (RG) and travel into ABS continental shelf after 3-5 years, but source locations are shifted westward by ~900 km along S04P in 2001-2006 compared to 2009-2014. We find that simulated on- and off-shelf CDW is ~0.1-0.2 °C warmer in the 2009-2014 case than in the 2001-2006 case together with changes in simulated ocean circulation. These differences are primarily caused by lateral, rather than surface, boundary conditions, implying that large-scale atmospheric and ocean circulations are able to control CDW pathways and thus off- and on-shelf CDW properties.