Title
Subsurface warming of West Antarctica during El Niño
About
In this project, I am running ENSO simulations to investigate their impact on West Antarctic subsurface shelf temperatures. I am using the 1/10° ACCESS-OM2 global ocean sea ice model and my perturbation forcing consists of composite ENSO-associated time series multiplied with composite ENSO-associate spatial patterns.
We see that during El Niño, the Amundsen Sea Low and coastal easterlies weaken, they reduce the poleward Ekman transport of cold surface waters towards the continent and enable upwelling of warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) onto the shelf. These warm water masses on the shelf can increase basal melt rates of ice shelves in the West Antarctic region. During La Niña, coastal easterlies and poleward Ekman transport of cold water is increased, which in turn reduces transport of CDW onto the shelf.
Poster
Note: this topic is part of the 2023 ACCESS Community Workshop Poster session
poster_access_nri_and_cosima_workshops_maurice_huguenin_2023.pdf (2.7 MB)
