This paper is a review article that stemmed from a debate within the Southern Ocean community. The paper explains how “fronts”, sharp boundaries between water masses, are defined, and what their effects might be on the biology of the Southern Ocean.
To better understand the biases and ultimately improve the quality of our climate records, CLEX researches and their collaborators undertook in situ measurements using the NOAA Physical Sciences Division flux system during the Clouds, Aerosols, Precipitation, Radiation, and Atmospheric Composition over the Southern Ocean (CAPRICORN) experiment in 2016.
The energy of vortices in the Southern Ocean has increased over the past two decades due to an increase in the mean amplitude of the vortices rather than an increase in their number.
CLEX researchers and colleagues examined the movement of surface water into the depths of the ocean in response to these wind changes using a global ocean model.
This project will quantify the impact of the front on air-sea exchange of heat and characterise how air-sea exchange and upper ocean properties change across the front.
Haoran Wang (University of Tasmania). Honours seminar: Properties of cloud and radiation environment across the Southern Ocean
Bree Woods (University of Tasmania)
CLEX researchers propose that 21% of the heat carried across the Subantarctic Front south of Tasmania is achieved by long-lived, cold-core eddies entering the Subantarctic Zone.
Graeme MacGilchrist (University of Princeton). Reframing the carbon cycle of the subpolar Southern Ocean. Global climate is critically sensitive to physical and biogeochemical dynamics in the subpolar Southern Ocean, since this is where the deepest, most carbon-rich layers of the world ocean outcrop and exchange carbon with the atmosphere. Here, we show that the conventional framework for the subpolar Southern Ocean carbon cycle, which attributes a dominant role to the vertical overturning circulation and shelf-sea processes, fundamentally misrepresents regional carbon... View Article
Antarctic sea ice extent underwent a rapid decline in the spring of 2016 and is still well below average now. CLEX researchers have tied the decline to natural variability of both the atmosphere and ocean in two articles published in Nature Communications this month.