Polar and Alpine Events Calendar
To Friday 04 March 2022
Abstract and Town Hall/Event submission is open. The submission deadline is 29 September, 11:59 pm Eastern Daylight Time.
Southern Ocean freshening has various sources linking to land ice, sea ice, the atmosphere and ocean dynamics itself. We thus must work across disciplines to fully understand sources and consequences, to be able to detect, attribute and predict. For the Ocean Sciences Meeting 2022 we thus invite you to contribute with your work and experience to this discussion in order to bridge still existing gaps in knowledge, data coverage and model capabilities.
Please submit an abstract to
HL16 Sources and consequences of Southern Ocean freshening: Toward synthesising observations and modelling
The Southern Ocean is consistently freshening, particularly in the upper layers and near the Antarctic coast. Freshening has been attributed to an increase in precipitation, basal melting of ice shelves and enhanced sea-ice melt and export. Freshening has also been observed in the abyssal Antarctic bottom water, formed close to the Antarctic coast and exported globally. The exact proportionality is highly uncertain, but all these processes contribute to formation of sea ice through strengthening surface stratification, changes in ocean circulation, and sea level rise. Implications for the oceanic heat content and the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet are likely but not yet well known. As the climate system continues to warm the relative magnitude of these processes and associated feedbacks may change leading to uncertain impacts on polar and global climate.
With this session we aim beyond sharing most recent research and plan for an engaged exchange among the scientific communities of ocean and cryosphere, modeling and observations, early career researchers and senior experts to examine the current state of knowledge on Southern Ocean freshening and discuss future research. We are particularly interested in work closing the gap between observations and modelling; this includes coordinated monitoring approaches and targeted joint model experiments. We specifically welcome ideas and proposals for highlighting the Southern Ocean in the just starting UN decade of ocean science.
Abstract submission is open until 29 September, 11:59 pm EDT at https://osm2022.secure-platform.com/a
Looking forward to your presentation and an exciting discussion
Torge Martin and Inga Smith