Numerical modeling of ocean and ice in the Amundsen Sea, Antarctica

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Amundsen Sea; Antarctic; Bellingshausen Sea; Pacific; Ross Sea; Southern Ocean; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice Shelves
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.577.4838; http://efdl.cims.nyu.edu/publications/unrefereed/nasa_workshop_05.pdf

In this study we use a computer model to begin to investigate how it is that warm ocean waters appear on the continental shelf of the Amundsen Sea, Antarctica. The Amundsen Sea, located in the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean, is sandwiched between the Bellingshausen Sea to its east and the Ross Sea to its west. There is a large exchange of water mass of the Amundsen with its two neighbors. In the southern Amundsen, our study area, the predominant east-to-west circulation means that water mass properties of the southern Bellingshausen are imported to the southern Amundsen, while the latter largely exports it properties to the southern Ross. The upper 200 m of water is termed as Antarctic Surface Water (AASW), being relatively light water. It is underlain by a denser but generally warmer layer of water referred to as Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW). This water mass originates in the vicinity of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), and originally enters the northern Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas as southward branch flows off the ACC. The CDW is observed to have a temperature maximum of about 1 °C in the southern Amundsen Sea. As such, it holds an enormous potential for melting at the base of floating ice shelves in this sector of the Southern Ocean, provided