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Spatial variability of Antarctic Bottom Water in the Australian Antarctic Basin from 2018–2020 captured by Deep Argo

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posted on 2023-05-21, 00:39 authored by Thomas, G, Purkey, SG, Roemmich, D, Annie FoppertAnnie Foppert, Stephen Rintoul
There are two varieties of Antarctic Bottom Water present in the Australian Antarctic Basin (AAB): locally produced Adélie Land Bottom Water (ALBW) and distantly produced Ross Sea Bottom Water (RSBW). Between 2014 and 2018, RSBW has rebounded from a multidecade freshening trend. The return of the salty RSBW to the AAB is revealed by six Deep Argo floats that have occupied the region from January of 2018 to March of 2020. The floats depict a zonal variation in temperature and salinity in the bottom waters of the AAB, driven by the inflow of RSBW. A simple Optimum Multiparameter Analysis based on potential temperature and salinity gives a sense of scale to the composition of the bottom waters, which are nearly 80% of the new, salty RSBW in the south-east corner of the basin by 2019 and generally less than 40% to the west closer to the ALBW outflow region and the abyssal plain.

History

Publication title

Geophysical Research Letters

Volume

47

Issue

23

Article number

e2020GL089467

Number

e2020GL089467

Pagination

1-9

ISSN

0094-8276

Department/School

Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies

Publisher

Amer Geophysical Union

Place of publication

2000 Florida Ave Nw, Washington, USA, Dc, 20009

Rights statement

© 2020. 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.

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Global effects of climate change (excl. Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and the South Pacific) (excl. social impacts); Expanding knowledge in the environmental sciences

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