Submesoscale Fronts in the Antarctic Marginal Ice Zone and Their Response to Wind Forcing

Submesoscale flows in the ocean are energetic motions, O(1–10 km), that influence stratification and the distributions of properties, such as heat and carbon. They are believed to play an important role in sea‐ice‐impacted oceans by modulating air‐sea‐ice fluxes and sea‐ice extent. The intensity of these flows and their response to wind forcing are unobserved in the sea‐ice regions of the Southern Ocean. We present the first submesoscale‐resolving observations in the Antarctic marginal ice zone (MIZ) collected by surface and underwater autonomous vehicles, for >3 months in austral summer. We observe salinity‐dominated lateral density fronts occurring at sub‐kilometer scales. Surface winds are shown to modify the magnitude of the mixed‐layer density fronts, revealing strongly coupled atmosphere‐ocean processes. We posture that these wind‐front interactions occur as a continuous interplay between front slumping and vertical mixing, which leads to the dispersion of submesoscale fronts. Such processes are expected to be ubiquitous in the Southern Ocean MIZ

Submesoscale Fronts in the Antarctic Marginal Ice Zone and Their Response to Wind Forcing

Submesoscale flows in the ocean are energetic motions, O(1–10 km), that influence stratification and the distributions of properties, such as heat and carbon. They are believed to play an important role in sea‐ice‐impacted oceans by modulating air‐sea‐ice fluxes and sea‐ice extent. The intensity of these flows and their response to wind forcing are unobserved in the sea‐ice regions of the Southern Ocean. We present the first submesoscale‐resolving observations in the Antarctic marginal ice zone (MIZ) collected by surface and underwater autonomous vehicles, for >3 months in austral summer. We observe salinity‐dominated lateral density fronts occurring at sub‐kilometer scales. Surface winds are shown to modify the magnitude of the mixed‐layer density fronts, revealing strongly coupled atmosphere‐ocean processes. We posture that these wind‐front interactions occur as a continuous interplay between front slumping and vertical mixing, which leads to the dispersion of submesoscale fronts. Such processes are expected to be ubiquitous in the Southern Ocean MIZ

Southern Ocean phytoplankton dynamics and carbon export: insights from a seasonal cycle approach

Quantifying the strength and efficiency of the Southern Ocean biological carbon pump (BCP) and its response to predicted changes in the Earth's climate is fundamental to our ability to predict long-term changes in the global carbon cycle and, by extension, the impact of continued anthropogenic perturbation of atmospheric CO2. There is little agreement, however, in climate model projections of the sensitivity of the Southern Ocean BCP to climate change, with a lack of consensus in even the direction of predicted change, highlighting a gap in our understanding of a major planetary carbon flux. In this review, we summarize relevant research that highlights the important role of fine-scale dynamics (both temporal and spatial) that link physical forcing mechanisms to biogeochemical responses that impact the characteristics of the seasonal cycle of phytoplankton and by extension the BCP. This approach highlights the potential for integrating autonomous and remote sensing observations of fine scale dynamics to derive regionally optimized biogeochemical parameterizations for Southern Ocean models. Ongoing development in both the observational and modelling fields will generate new insights into Southern Ocean ecosystem function for improved predictions of the sensitivity of the Southern Ocean BCP to climate change. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Heat and carbon uptake in the Southern Ocean: the state of the art and future priorities'

The Southern Ocean mixed layer and its boundary fluxes: Fine-scale observational progress and future research priorities

Interactions between the upper ocean and air-ice-ocean fluxes in the Southern Ocean play a critical role in global climate by impacting the overturning circulation and oceanic heat and carbon uptake. Remote and challenging conditions have led to sparse observational coverage, while ongoing field programmes often fail to collect sufficient information in the right place or at the time-space scales required to constrain the variability occurring in the coupled ocean-atmosphere system. Only within the last 10 years have we been able to directly observe and assess the role of the fine-scale ocean and rapidly evolving atmospheric marine boundary layer on the upper limb of the Southern Ocean's overturning circulation. This review summarizes advances in mechanistic understanding, arising in part from observational programmes using autonomous platforms, of the fine-scale processes (1-100 km, hours-seasons) influencing the Southern Ocean mixed layer and its variability. We also review progress in observing the ocean interior connections and the coupled interactions between the ocean, atmosphere and cryosphere that moderate air-sea fluxes of heat and carbon. Most examples provided are for the ice-free Southern Ocean, while major challenges remain for observing the ice-covered ocean. We attempt to elucidate contemporary research gaps and ongoing/future efforts needed to address them. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Heat and carbon uptake in the Southern Ocean: the state of the art and future priorities'

OceanGliders Oxygen SOP

The live version of this SOP is on the Ocean Gliders community in GITHUB. The home repository of this publication is in the Ocean Best Practices Repository. This standard operating procedure (SOP) document for dissolved oxygen (DO) aims to guide the user through the steps necessary to collect good quality dissolved oxygen data using ocean gliders for both real time and post deployment data streams

Evaluation of an eddy resolving HYCOM simulation in the South Atlantic Ocean

Includes bibliographical references.The South Atlantic Ocean acts as a key region of ocean teleconnections and water mass transformation, directly transporting waters from the Southern, Pacific and Indian Oceans towards the North Atlantic and feeding the upper branch of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. To date, this region remains under sampled over long time periods. Models form useful platforms for the wholistic study of such regions where long term datasets are not available. However, it is important to first gauge to what extent the model deviates from available observations. In a detailed analysis, this study evaluates an eddy resolving 1/12° HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model simulation in the South Atlantic and Agulhas regions with reference to available observations and literature. The outcomes of this research contribute to improving the configurations of future ocean models by identifying the limitations of the model analysed. In addition, analysis of the 50 year (1960-2009) simulation reveals that, in this model simulation, mesoscale activity and sea surface temperature trends in the Cape Basin are not related to Agulhas Current transport changes. These findings highlights the need for long term observational databases and further research into climate related trends and interannual variability of the ocean, in particular around Southern Africa

GliderTools: A Python Toolbox for Processing Underwater Glider Data

Underwater gliders have become widely used in the last decade. This has led to a proliferation of data and the concomitant development of tools to process the data. These tools are focused primarily on converting the data from its raw form to more accessible formats and often rely on proprietary programing languages. This has left a gap in the processing of glider data for academics, who often need to perform secondary quality control (QC), calibrate, correct, interpolate and visualize data. Here, we present GliderTools, an open-source Python package that addresses these needs of the glider user community. The tool is designed to change the focus from the processing to the data. GliderTools does not aim to replace existing software that converts raw data and performs automatic first-order QC. In this paper, we present a set of tools, that includes secondary cleaning and calibration, calibration procedures for bottle samples, fluorescence quenching correction, photosynthetically available radiation (PAR) corrections and data interpolation in the vertical and horizontal dimensions. Many of these processes have been described in several other studies, but do not exist in a collated package designed for underwater glider data. Importantly, we provide potential users with guidelines on how these tools are used so that they can be easily and rapidly accessible to a wide range of users that span the student to the experienced researcher. We recognize that this package may not be all-encompassing for every user and we thus welcome community contributions and promote GliderTools as a community-driven project for scientists.ISSN:2296-774

Supplementary figures for ‘Southern Ocean phytoplankton dynamics and carbon export: insights from a seasonal cycle approach’

Quantifying the strength and efficiency of the Southern Ocean biological carbon pump (BCP) and its response to predicted changes in the Earth's climate is fundamental to our ability to predict long-term changes in the global carbon cycle and, by extension, the impact of continued anthropogenic perturbation of atmospheric CO2. There is little agreement, however, in climate model projections of the sensitivity of the Southern Ocean BCP to climate change, with a lack of consensus in even the direction of predicted change, highlighting a gap in our understanding of a major planetary carbon flux. In this review, we summarize relevant research that highlights the important role of fine-scale dynamics (both temporal and spatial) that link physical forcing mechanisms to biogeochemical responses that impact the characteristics of the seasonal cycle of phytoplankton and by extension the BCP. This approach highlights the potential for integrating autonomous and remote sensing observations of fine scale dynamics to derive regionally optimized biogeochemical parameterizations for Southern Ocean models. Ongoing development in both the observational and modelling fields will generate new insights into Southern Ocean ecosystem function for improved predictions of the sensitivity of the Southern Ocean BCP to climate change.This article is part of the discussion meeting issue 'Heat and carbon uptake in the Southern Ocean: the state of the art and future priorities'

Southern ocean carbon and heat impact on climate

The Southern Ocean greatly contributes to the regulation of the global climate by controlling important heat and carbon exchanges between the atmosphere and the ocean. Rates of climate change on decadal timescales are therefore impacted by oceanic processes taking place in the Southern Ocean, yet too little is known about these processes. Limitations come both from the lack of observations in this extreme environment and its inherent sensitivity to intermittent processes at scales that are not well captured in current Earth system models. The Southern Ocean Carbon and Heat Impact on Climate programme was launched to address this knowledge gap, with the overall objective to understand and quantify variability of heat and carbon budgets in the Southern Ocean through an investigation of the key physical processes controlling exchanges between the atmosphere, ocean and sea ice using a combination of observational and modelling approaches. Here, we provide a brief overview of the programme, as well as a summary of some of the scientific progress achieved during its first half. Advances range from new evidence of the importance of specific processes in Southern Ocean ventilation rate (e.g. storm-induced turbulence, sea-ice meltwater fronts, wind-induced gyre circulation, dense shelf water formation and abyssal mixing) to refined descriptions of the physical changes currently ongoing in the Southern Ocean and of their link with global climate. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Heat and carbon uptake in the Southern Ocean: the state of the art and future priorities'.ISSN:1364-503XISSN:1471-296