Between the devil and the deep blue sea : the role of the Amundsen Sea continental shelf in exchanges between ocean and ice shelves
Abstract
The Amundsen Sea is a key region of Antarctica where ocean, atmosphere, sea ice and ice sheet interact. For much of Antarctica, the relatively warm ocean water in the open Southern Ocean (a few degrees above freezing) is unable to reach the continental shelf in large volumes under current climate conditions. In the Amundsen Sea, however, warm water penetrates onto the continental shelf and provides heat that can melt the underside of the floating ice shelves. Here we discuss how the role of the ocean has come under increased scrutiny in recent years, because ocean heat fluxes have been implicated in the thinning of the ice shelves. We present observations from the Amundsen Sea in 2014 and discuss their implications, highlighting aspects where our understanding is still incomplete.
Citation
Heywood , K , Biddle , L , Boehme , L , Dutrieux , P , Fedak , M A , Jenkins , A , Jones , R W , Kaiser , J , Mallett , H , Naveira Garabato , A C , Renfrew , I A , Stevens , D P & Webber , B G M 2016 , ' Between the devil and the deep blue sea : the role of the Amundsen Sea continental shelf in exchanges between ocean and ice shelves ' , Oceanography , vol. 29 , no. 4 , pp. 118-129 . https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2016.104
Publication
Oceanography
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1042-8275Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright 2016 by The Oceanography Society. All rights reserved. This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.
Description
This work was supported by funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council's iSTAR Program through grants NE/J005703, NE/J005649/1 and NE/J005770/1.Collections
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