Oceanographic conditions beneath Fimbul Ice Shelf, Antarctica

Antarctic ice shelves play a key role in the global climate system, acting as important sites for the cooling of shelf waters, thereby facilitating deep and bottom water formation. Many of the processes that take place under large ice shelves can be observed more conveniently beneath smaller ice shelves such as Fimbul Ice Shelf, an ice shelf in the eastern Weddell Sea. Fimbul Ice Shelf and nearby ice shelves might also play a significant regional role: although no bottom water is produced in this area, it is thought that Fimbul Ice Shelf and nearby ice shelves precondition the shelf waters that ultimately are converted to Weddell Sea Deep Water (WSDW) in the southern Weddell Sea. Using the first data ever to be collected beneath an ice shelf from an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), as well as data from the vicinity of the ice shelf using traditional oceanographic methods, this thesis discusses the circulation and processes occurring beneath the ice shelf. This has been supplemented by using a coupled ice shelf/ocean model, POLAIR, to simulate the circulation, melting, and tides under Fimbul Ice Shelf and in the surrounding area. Data from the ice shelf cavity show relatively large variability in temperatures, but all within approx. 0.25 °C of the freezing point. Melt rates are found to be lower than some previous model studies, but in better agreement with observations and glaciological models. The base of the ice shelf was found to be rough in places, corresponding to `flow traces' visible in satellite imagery. This could have implications for mixing beneath the ice shelf, at least in these limited areas. The Autosub AUV was found to be a useful platform for measuring hydrography and ice shelf cavity geometry with spatial coverage and resolution not available from surface measurements

Ice draft and current measurements from the north-western Barents Sea, 1993-96

From 1993 to 1996, three oceanographic moorings were deployed in the north-western Barents Sea, each with a current meter and an upward-looking sonar for measuring ice drafts. These yielded three years of current and two years of ice draft measurements. An interannual variability of almost 1 m was measured in the average ice draft. Causes for this variability are explored, particularly its possible connection to changes in atmospheric circulation patterns. We found that the flow of Northern Barents Atlantic-derived Water and the transport of ice from the Central Arctic into the Barents Sea appears to be controlled by winds between Nordaustlandet and Franz Josef Land, which in turn may be influenced by larger-scale variations such as the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation

Physical oceanography, nutrients, and δ¹⁸O measured on water bottle samples during POLARSTERN cruise ARK-XXII/2

Extremely low summer sea-ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean in 2007 allowed extensive sampling and a wide quasi-synoptic hydrographic and d18O dataset could be collected in the Eurasian Basin and the Makarov Basin up to the Alpha Ridge and the East Siberian continental margin. With the aim of determining the origin of freshwater in the halocline, fractions of river water and sea-ice meltwater in the upper 150 m were quantified by a combination of salinity and d18O in the Eurasian Basin. Two methods, applying the preformed phosphate concentration (PO*) and the nitrate-to-phosphate ratio (N/P), were compared to further differentiate the marine fraction into Atlantic and Pacific-derived contributions. While PO*-based assessments systematically underestimate the contribution of Pacific-derived waters, N/P-based calculations overestimate Pacific-derived waters within the Transpolar Drift due to denitrification in bottom sediments at the Laptev Sea continental margin. Within the Eurasian Basin a west to east oriented front between net melting and production of sea-ice is observed. Outside the Atlantic regime dominated by net sea-ice melting, a pronounced layer influenced by brines released during sea-ice formation is present at about 30 to 50 m water depth with a maximum over the Lomonosov Ridge. The geographically distinct definition of this maximum demonstrates the rapid release and transport of signals from the shelf regions in discrete pulses within the Transpolar Drift. The ratio of sea-ice derived brine influence and river water is roughly constant within each layer of the Arctic Ocean halocline. The correlation between brine influence and river water reveals two clusters that can be assigned to the two main mechanisms of sea-ice formation within the Arctic Ocean. Over the open ocean or in polynyas at the continental slope where relatively small amounts of river water are found, sea-ice formation results in a linear correlation between brine influence and river water at salinities of about 32 to 34. In coastal polynyas in the shallow regions of the Laptev Sea and southern Kara Sea, sea-ice formation transports river water into the shelf's bottom layer due to the close proximity to the river mouths. This process therefore results in waters that form a second linear correlation between brine influence and river water at salinities of about 30 to 32. Our study indicates which layers of the Arctic Ocean halocline are primarily influenced by sea-ice formation in coastal polynyas and which layers are primarily influenced by sea-ice formation over the open ocean. Accordingly we use the ratio of sea-ice derived brine influence and river water to link the maximum in brine influence within the Transpolar Drift with a pulse of shelf waters from the Laptev Sea that was likely released in summer 2005