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Published November 28, 2013 | Published
Journal Article Open

Surface exchange between the Weddell and Scotia Seas

Abstract

Within Drake Passage, the southern flank of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) hosts the ventilation of deep water, the injection of Antarctic shelf waters and interactions between westward and eastward boundary currents. This exchange is explored through the trajectories of forty surface drifters released in January 2012 in the northwestern Weddell Sea. The drifters detail Lagrangian transport pathways between the eastern Antarctic Peninsula and sites of elevated chlorophyll in the Scotia Sea. ACC frontal currents, in particular the Southern ACC Front, act as dynamical transport barriers to the drifters and influence surface chlorophyll distributions, indicating that ACC fronts partition Weddell source waters in the Scotia Sea. Interannual fluctuations in surface chlorophyll in the south Scotia Sea and the northern Weddell Sea covary. This suggests that Scotia Sea ecosystem dynamics are linked to water properties injected from the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula and respond to Weddell Gyre circulation changes.

Additional Information

© 2013 American Geophysical Union. Received 11 October 2013; revised 31 October 2013; accepted 1 November 2013; published 21 November 2013. A.F.T. was supported by the Davidow Discovery Fund. M.K.Y. completed this work as a participant in Caltech's SURF program, with support from the J. Weldon Green fellowship. We thank the NOAA Global Drifter Program for augmenting the drifter array, and especially Mayra Pazos and Gary Williams for assistance with the data. We thank the crew of the RRS James Clark Ross and acknowledge the ship time provided through GENTOO project. The altimeter products were produced by Ssalto/Duacs and distributed by AVISO with support from CNES. Conversations with Mar Flexas and Sally Thorpe and two reviewers' comments helped to improve this manuscript. The Editor thanks two anonymous reviewers for assistance evaluating this manuscript.

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Created:
August 22, 2023
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October 25, 2023