southernocean.app

#Southern Ocean Application Meta

#Southern ocean | Encircles Antarctica | Waters south of 60° S latitude | Covers ca. 21.96 million square kilometers | The fourth largest ocean basin | Antarctic Circumpolar Current (AAC) flows through it | ACC significantly influences global ocean circulation by connecting Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans | Average depth of approximately 3,270 meters (10,728 feet) | Maximum depth of 7,434 meters (24,390 feet) at Factorian Deep

#Antarctic Circumpolar Current

#Large Scale Circulation

#Deep Topography

#Gyres

#Wind Driven Gyres

#Oceanographic Zone

#Slopes

#Antarctic Treaty

#Bathymetry

#Southern Ocean Circulation

#Flows Between Oceans

#Deepwater Masses

#Sea Ice Formation

#Deep Waters

#Bottom Waters

#Ice Shelves

#Global Ocean Mixing

#Melting Of Ice Shelves

#Freshwater Entering To Oceans

#Cryo Sphere Interaction

#Global Ocean Property

#Climate System

#Southern Ocean Dynamics

#Turbulent Mixing

#Ocean Interior

#Ocean Layers

#Air Sea Forcing

#Small Processes

#Mesoscale Processes

#Interactions

#Weddel Sea

#Ocean Acidification

#Surrounding Antarctica

#Cryosphere

#Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem (VME) | One nautical mile in radius | Hub of biodiversity | Made up of organisms especially vulnerable to bottom-fishing gear | Refuge for life forms stressed by rapidly warming ocean

#Reduced Snap Back rope

#Southern Ocean Heat Burp in a Cooling World | Simulating several hundred years of net-negative emissions and gradual global cooling | Abrupt discharge of heat from Southern Ocean modeled | Global mean surface temperature increase of several tenths of degrees lasting for more than a century modeled | Ocean heat burp reasoned to originate from heat previously accumulated under global warming in deep Southern Ocean | Multi-centennial scale climate simulations | Question of the durability of oceanic storage of heat and carbon more urgent as ocean warming is accelerating | As atmospheric CO2 strongly decreases and atmospheric temperature declines, carbon and heat stored in the ocean start to return to the ocean surface | The majority of interior ocean waters ultimately returns to Southern Ocean surface and is reexposed to atmosphere in Southern Ocean | In Southern Ocean density layers outcrop at ocean surface, directly connecting surface to interior ocean thereby regulating oceanic exchange with atmosphere | Combined with persistent large-scale upwelling, Southern Ocean is prominent candidate for release of heat and carbon from ocean interior under reversal of atmospheric CO2 and global cooling | 40% of oceanic uptake of carbon | 80% of oceanic uptake of heat | Earth system model | Mass and energy conserving University of Victoria model UVic | Simulations of long time scales and carbon cycle feedbacks | UVic features atmospheric energy-balance model, ocean circulation and sea-ice model, land biosphere and ocean biogeochemistry with two plankton groups | Horizontal resolution: 3.6 × 1.8 | Ocean model; 19 vertical z-layers with increasing thicknesses over depths from 50m to 500m | Ocean Heat Release Causes Warm Period | Accumulated Heat Pushing up in Southern Ocean | Large-scale upwelling of deep waters in Southern Ocean keep surface temperatures comparatively cool | Southern Ocean serves as window to atmosphere, abruptly releasing heat during event and driving global surface warming and top of atmosphere energy loss, causing heat burp | Climate and Earth system models do not simulate changes in ice sheets and consequently miss the effect of freshwater input to ocean associated with ice sheet mass loss under global warming | Melt water discharge from Antarctic ice sheet triggered by global warming will have an additional, long-lasting freshening effect | Model used lacks a full response of the wind | Model also misses cloud feedbacks | Research underlines both importance of Southern Ocean in climate system and its response to changes in climate system beyond heat and carbon uptake under contemporary rising global temperatures | It is important to continue to improve process understanding of how waters return from interior Southern Ocean and what determines their properties | Interactive ice sheets needed | Observational data collection needed | Deep Argo observing waters below 2,000 m depths needed | Ack: research-unit Biogeochemical Modeling and funding by European Research Council (ERC)