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Oelerich, Ria, Heywood, Karen J. 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9859-0026, Damerell, Gillian M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5808-0822, du Plessis, Marcel, Biddle, Louise C. and Swart, Sebastiaan
(2023)
Stirring across the Antarctic Circumpolar Current's southern boundary at the prime meridian, Weddell Sea.
Ocean Science, 19 (5).
1465–1482.
ISSN 1812-0784
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Abstract
At the southern boundary of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), relatively warm ACC waters encounter the colder waters surrounding Antarctica. Strong density gradients across the southern boundary indicate the presence of a frontal jet and are thought to modulate the southward heat transport across the front. In this study, the southern boundary in the Weddell Sea sector at the prime meridian is surveyed for the first time in high resolution over 2 months during an austral summer with underwater gliders occupying a transect across the front on five occasions. The five transects show that the frontal structure (i.e. hydrography, velocities and lateral density gradients) varies temporally. The results demonstrate significant, transient (a few weeks) variability of the southern boundary and its frontal jet in location, strength and width. A mesoscale cold-core eddy is identified to disrupt the southern boundary’s frontal structure and strengthen lateral density gradients across the front. The front's barrier properties are assessed using mixing length scales and potential vorticity to establish the cross-frontal exchange of properties between the ACC and the Weddell Gyre. The results show that stronger lateral density gradients caused by the mesoscale eddy strengthen the barrier-like properties of the front through reduced mixing length scales and pronounced gradients of potential vorticity. In contrast, the barrier-like properties of the southern boundary are reduced when no mesoscale eddy is influencing the density gradients across the front. Using satellite altimetry, we further demonstrate that the barrier properties over the past decade have strengthened as a result of increased meridional gradients of absolute dynamic topography and increased frontal jet speeds in comparison to previous decades. Our results emphasise that locally and rapidly changing barrier properties of the southern boundary are important to quantify the cross-frontal exchange, which is particularly relevant in regions where the southern boundary is located near the Antarctic shelf break (e.g. in the West Antarctic sector).
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Additional Information: | Data availability: Quality-controlled, vertically gridded data from the two Seaglider vehicles are available from the following links: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7472263 (Heywood et al., 2022) for SG537 and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7472428 (Swart, 2022) for SG640. The altimetry and sea ice concentration data are both provided by the Copernicus Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) and are available at https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00148 (CMEMS, 2022) (altimetry). Financial support: This research has been supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (COMPASS, advanced grant agreement no. 741120), a Wallenberg Academy Fellowship (WAF 2015.0186), the Swedish Research Council (VR 2019-04400), the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 821001 (SO-CHIC), and a European Union Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual fellowship under project ID 101032683. |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | sdg 13 - climate action ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 19 Oct 2023 03:40 |
| Last Modified: | 19 Oct 2023 03:40 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/93367 |
| DOI: | 10.5194/os-19-1465-2023 |
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