Estimation of Surface Heat/Salt Fluxes Associated with Sea Ice Growth/Melt in the Southern Ocean

• Published in: SOLA
• Main Authors: Tamura, T, Ohshima, KI, Nihashi, S, Hasumi, H
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Meteorological Society of Japan 2011
• Subjects: Earth Sciences; Oceanography; Physical Oceanography; Southern Ocean; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.2151/sola.2011-005; http://ecite.utas.edu.au/76891

The sinking of dense water in the polar oceans plays a keyrole in global thermohaline circulation, leading to heat and materialexchange between the atmosphere and deep ocean. This studyprovides the first surface heat and salt flux dataset for the SouthernOcean (including a treatment of sea ice growth and melt), basedon heat flux calculations and satellite-derived sea ice data. Thegeographical distribution of annual net heat (salt) flux shows adistinct contrast: significant cooling of (salt release into) the oceanoccurs in the coastal region, and net heating of (freshwater releaseinto) the ocean occurs in the offshore region. The work tries aquantitative representation of heat and freshwater transport by seaice formed in the coastal region to offshore. Since hemisphericscaleheat and salt fluxes associated with sea ice growth and melthave not been estimated from observations to date, the presentdataset will provide new information with which to validatecoupled ice-ocean models while providing important boundaryconditions for the various models.