Ocean temperature and salinity measured by CTD SRDLs deployed on southern elephant seals from King George Island with links to datasets

DOI

West Antarctic ice shelves have thinned dramatically over recent decades. Oceanographic measurements that explore connections between offshore warming and transport across a continental shelf with variable bathymetry toward ice shelves are needed to constrain future changes in melt rates. Six years of seal-acquired observations provide extensive hydrographic coverage in the Bellingshausen Sea, where ship-based measurements are scarce. Warm but modified Circumpolar Deep Water floods the shelf and establishes a cyclonic circulation within the Belgica Trough with flow extending toward the coast along the eastern boundaries and returning to the shelf break along western boundaries. These boundary currents are the primary water mass pathways that carry heat toward the coast and advect ice shelf meltwater offshore. The modified Circumpolar Deep Water and meltwater mixtures shoal and thin as they approach the continental slope before flowing westward at the shelf break, suggesting the presence of the Antarctic Slope Current. Constraining meltwater pathways is a key step in monitoring the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.150009
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL068998
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2017.234
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.150009
Provenance
Creator Bornemann, Horst; Bester, Marthán Nieuwoudt; de Bruyn, P J Nico ORCID logo; Márquez, María Elba Isabel; McIntyre, Trevor ORCID logo; Plötz, Joachim; Schröder, Michael; Tosh, Cheryl Ann ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2015
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Bibliography of Datasets; Collection
Size 20 datasets
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-112.227W, -73.764S, -34.750E, -53.934N); Southern Ocean - Atlantic Sector
Temporal Coverage Begin 2010-03-20T03:10:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2014-03-26T21:20:00Z