Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Southern Ocean Ventilation

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• Andrew Styles, British Antarctic Survey
• Wednesday 20 March 2024, 14:00-15:00
• BAS Seminar Room 1; zoom.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Birgit Rogalla.

Only a small fraction of the ocean is interacting with the atmosphere at any given time. This water is definitively found in the upper mixing layer of the ocean. When this water leaves the mixing layer and enters the ocean interior, it has ‘ventilated’ (this term arising from the abundance of oxygen in newly ventilated water). The Southern Ocean is an important ventilation site for heat and carbon and is likely to influence the outcome of anthropogenic climate change. We conduct an extensive backwards-in-time trajectory experiment (effectively calculating a 30 year ‘history’ of the Southern Ocean) to identify spatial and temporal patterns of ventilation. Temporally, almost all ventilation occurs between August and November. Spatially, ‘hotspots’ of ventilation account for 60% of open-ocean ventilation on a 30-year timescale; the remaining 40% ventilates in a circumpolar pattern. The densest waters ventilate on the Antarctic shelf, primarily near the Antarctic Peninsula (40%) and the west Ross Sea (20%); the remaining 40% is distributed across East Antarctica. Shelf-ventilated waters also appear to experience significant densification outside of the mixed layer.

This talk is part of the British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series series.

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