Weddell Sea

Assembled from 36 blocks · 1 evidence · 77 related

1. Story
2. The large embayment of the Southern Ocean south of the South Atlantic, bounded by the Antarctic Peninsula to the west and Coats Land to the east, and the single largest source of Antarctic Bottom Water. Sea ice forms over its shelves through the winter and rejects brine into water already at its freezing point; the resulting shelf water is dense enough to sink to the deepest parts of the ocean. Repeat hydrographic sections show its bottom-water volume shrinking and its densest classes disappearing fastest.
3. Knowledge
4. Southern Ocean
5. Weddell Sea
6. Connections
7. Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW)
8. Southern Ocean
9. Antarctic meltwater is projected to slow the abyssal cell
10. Antarctic Blue Whale (B. m. intermedia)
11. Antarctic Summer Feeding Migration
12. South Georgia
13. Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary
14. Seasonal Krill Aggregation
15. The factory ship Lancing takes a stern slipway south
16. The Antarctic blue whale catch reaches its all-time peak
17. The Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary is adopted
18. Dedicated Antarctic Blue Whale Project voyages
19. Baleen whale consumption is re-measured, and the krill paradox sharpens
20. The only published Antarctic blue whale satellite tracks are released as data
21. Antarctic Krill (Euphausia superba)
22. Arctic Tern (Sterna paradisaea)
23. CCAMLR is agreed at Canberra
24. A long-term decline in krill density is linked to winter sea ice
25. CCAMLR adopts the Ross Sea marine protected area
26. Antarctic sea ice reaches a record low, a year after the previous one
27. Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC)
28. Antarctica
29. Thermohaline Circulation
30. North Atlantic — Grand Banks approaches
31. Weddell Sea
32. A circumpolar current becomes possible
33. Antarctic meltwater is projected to slow the abyssal cell
34. A physics-based early warning signal is proposed
35. Evidence
36. Antarctic meltwater freshening shelf waters is projected to drive a substantial slowdown and warming of the abyssal overturning cell fed by Antarctic Bottom Water. Associated observational figures quoted here — an approximately 30 per cent decline in Weddell Sea Bottom Water volume since 1992 and a greater than 40 per cent decline in shelf sea-ice formation rate — come from adjacent studies summarised alongside it, not from this paper.