The Weddell Upper Ocean: Analysis, Synthesis, and Modeling of ISPOL and MaudNESS Results

Mcphee Research Company, Naches WA

Investigators

Abstract

In the Weddell Sea, the balance between sea ice production and the upward mixing of oceanic heat (along with other chemical constituents such as CO2 and nutrients) appears to be delicately poised. Better descriptions of these microturbulence characteristics and controls on the mixing of heat and salt in atmosphere-sea ice-ocean systems are sought to increase our understanding of how this balance is maintained, or may change in a warming climate. Extensive field data sets have been obtained from two recent research campaigns in the Weddell Sea sector of the Southern Ocean. The first of these, Ice Station Polarstern (ISPOL), organized by German researchers (AWI - Bremerhaven) investigated biological air-sea-ice interactions in a 50 day drift station in multiyear ice floes, east of the Antarctic Peninsula. The MaudNESS (Maud Rise Nonlinear Equation of State Study) project sought to better understand convective modes associated with the presence and absence of polyna in the Weddell Sea by investigating late-winter upper ocean mixing in regions of weak density stratification in the vicinity of the Maud Rise seamount. Further analysis of the physics of microstructure turbulence as determined from instrumented measurements of covariance-based heat and salt fluxes in Weddell Sea upper ocean sea ice zones are to be completed in this work.