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Landfast ice controls on turbulence in Antarctic coastal seas
Citation
Inall, ME and Brearley, JA and Henley, SF and Fraser, AD and Reed, S, Landfast ice controls on turbulence in Antarctic coastal seas, Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 127, (1) Article e2021JC017963. ISSN 2169-9275 (2021) [Refereed Article]
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Copyright Statement
© 2021. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Knowledge of the ocean surface layer beneath Antarctic landfast ice is sparse. In this article surface layer turbulent and fine structure are quantified with and without landfast ice at the same West Antarctic Peninsula location. Landfast ice reduced turbulence levels locally to an order of magnitude less than ice-free values, and near-inertial energy and sub-inertial tidal energy levels to less than half their ice-free values. Vertical turbulent heat and nutrient fluxes were, respectively, 6 and 10 times greater than previously estimated. Under-ice tidal energy dissipation over the entire Antarctic continental shelf due to seasonal landfast ice cover is estimated to be between 788 MW to ∼6 GW. The total rate of wind-generated turbulence in the surface ocean is greatly reduced by the presence of seasonal landfast ice to an average of 14% of the ice-free value, but with large sectoral variations. Counter-intuitively, however, tides and wind contribute approximately equally to the turbulent kinetic energy budget of the upper ocean between the Antarctic coastline and the maximal landfast ice extent, with large sectoral variations, attributed to geographic variations in the strength of the barotropic tide.
Item Details
| Item Type: | Refereed Article |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | Antarctic landfast sea ice, ocean turbulence |
| Research Division: | Earth Sciences |
| Research Group: | Oceanography |
| Research Field: | Physical oceanography |
| Objective Division: | Environmental Management |
| Objective Group: | Management of Antarctic and Southern Ocean environments |
| Objective Field: | Antarctic and Southern Ocean oceanic processes |
| UTAS Author: | Fraser, AD (Dr Alex Fraser) |
| ID Code: | 148274 |
| Year Published: | 2021 |
| Deposited By: | Australian Antarctic Program Partnership |
| Deposited On: | 2021-12-16 |
| Last Modified: | 2022-10-13 |
| Downloads: | 8 View Download Statistics |
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