Search

Global- and basin-scale ocean reanalyses are becoming easily accessible and are utilized widely to study the Southern Ocean. However, such ocean reanalyses are optimized to achieve the best model–data agreement for their entire model domains and their ability to simulate the Southern Ocean requires investigation. Here, we compare several ocean reanalyses (ECCOv4r5, ECCO LLC270, B-SOSE, and GECCO3) based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology General Circulation Model (MITgcm) for the Southern Ocean. For the open ocean, the simulated time-mean hydrography and ocean circulation are similar to observations. The MITgcm-based ocean reanalyses show Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) levels measuring approximately 149 ± 11 Sv. The simulated 2 °C isotherms are located in positions similar to the ACC and roughly represent the southern extent of the current. Simulated Weddell Gyre and Ross Gyre strengths are 51 ± 11 and 25 ± 8 Sv, respectively, which is consistent with observation-based estimates. However, our evaluation finds that the time evolution of the Southern Ocean is not well simulated in these ocean reanalyses. While observations showed little change in open-ocean properties in the Weddell and Ross gyres, all simulations showed larger trends, most of which are excessive warming. For the continental shelf region, all reanalyses are unable to reproduce observed hydrographic features, suggesting that the simulated physics determining on-shelf hydrography and circulation is not well represented. Nevertheless, ocean reanalyses are valuable resources and can be used for generating ocean lateral boundary conditions for regional high-resolution simulations. We recommend that future users of these ocean reanalyses pay extra attention if their studies target open-ocean Southern Ocean temporal changes or on-shelf processes.

Abstract In recent decades, the Greenland ice sheet has been losing mass through glacier retreat and ice flow acceleration. This mass loss is linked with variations in submarine melt, yet existing ocean models are either coarse global simulations focused on decadal‐scale variability or fine‐scale simulations for process‐based investigations. Here, we unite these scales with a framework to downscale from a global state estimate (15 km) into a regional model (3 km) that resolves circulation on the continental shelf. We further downscale into a fjord‐scale model (500 m) that resolves circulation inside fjords and quantifies melt. We demonstrate this approach in Scoresby Sund, East Greenland, and find that interannual variations in submarine melt at Daugaard‐Jensen glacier induced by ocean temperature variability are consistent with the decadal changes in glacier ice dynamics. This study provides a framework by which coarse‐resolution models can be refined to quantify glacier submarine melt for future ice sheet projections.

Tide gauge observations of relative sea-level trends between 1993 and 2018 around the contiguous United States can largely be attributed to a combination of changes in ocean mass, sterodynamic effects and vertical land motion, according to a sea-level budgeting exercise.

The Antarctic coastal ocean impacts sea level rise, deep-ocean circulation, marine ecosystems, and the global carbon cycle. To better describe and understand these processes and their variability, it is necessary to combine the sparse available observations with the best-possible numerical descriptions of ocean circulation. In particular, high ice shelf melting rates in the Amundsen Sea have attracted many observational campaigns, and we now have some limited oceanographic data that capture seasonal and interannual variability during the past decade. One method to combine observations with numerical models that can maximize the information extracted from the sparse observations is the adjoint method, a.k.a. 4D-Var (4-dimensional variational assimilation), as developed and implemented for global ocean state estimation by the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) project. Here, for the first time, we apply the adjoint-model estimation method to a regional configuration of the Amundsen and Bellingshausen seas, Antarctica, including explicit representation of sub-ice-shelf cavities. We utilize observations available during 2010–2014, including ship-based and seal-tagged CTD measurements, moorings, and satellite sea-ice concentration estimates. After 20 iterations of the adjoint-method minimization algorithm, the cost function, here defined as a sum of the weighted model–data difference, is reduced by 65 % relative to the baseline simulation by adjusting initial conditions, atmospheric forcing, and vertical diffusivity. The sea-ice and ocean components of the cost function are reduced by 59 % and 70 %, respectively. Major improvements include better representations of (1) Winter Water (WW) characteristics and (2) intrusions of modified Circumpolar Deep Water (mCDW) towards the Pine Island Glacier. Sensitivity experiments show that ∼40 % and ∼10 % of improvements in sea ice and ocean state, respectively, can be attributed to the adjustment of air temperature and wind. This study is a preliminary demonstration of adjoint-method optimization with explicit representation of ice shelf cavity circulation. Despite the 65 % cost reduction, substantial model–data discrepancies remain, in particular with annual and interannual variability observed by moorings in front of the Pine Island Ice Shelf. We list a series of possible causes for these residuals, including limitations of the model, the optimization methodology, and observational sampling. In particular, we hypothesize that residuals could be further reduced if the model could more accurately represent sea-ice concentration and coastal polynyas.

Abstract Quantifying variability in the ocean carbon sink remains problematic due to sparse observations and spatiotemporal variability in surface ocean pCO2. To address this challenge, we have updated and improved ECCO‐Darwin, a global ocean biogeochemistry model that assimilates both physical and biogeochemical observations. The model consists of an adjoint‐based ocean circulation estimate from the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) consortium and an ecosystem model developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Darwin Project. In addition to the data‐constrained ECCO physics, a Green's function approach is used to optimize the biogeochemistry by adjusting initial conditions and six biogeochemical parameters. Over seasonal to multidecadal timescales (1995–2017), ECCO‐Darwin exhibits broad‐scale consistency with observed surface ocean pCO2 and air‐sea CO2 flux reconstructions in most biomes, particularly in the subtropical and equatorial regions. The largest differences between CO2 uptake occur in subpolar seasonally stratified biomes, where ECCO‐Darwin results in stronger winter uptake. Compared to the Global Carbon Project OBMs, ECCO‐Darwin has a time‐mean global ocean CO2 sink (2.47 ± 0.50 Pg C year−1) and interannual variability that are more consistent with interpolation‐based products. Compared to interpolation‐based methods, ECCO‐Darwin is less sensitive to sparse and irregularly sampled observations. Thus, ECCO‐Darwin provides a basis for identifying and predicting the consequences of natural and anthropogenic perturbations to the ocean carbon cycle, as well as the climate‐related sensitivity of marine ecosystems. Our study further highlights the importance of physically consistent, property‐conserving reconstructions, as are provided by ECCO, for ocean biogeochemistry studies.

Bed topography is a critical boundary for the numerical modelling of ice sheets and ice–ocean interactions. A persistent issue with existing topography products for the bed of the Greenland Ice Sheet and surrounding sea floor is the poor representation of coastal bathymetry, especially in regions of floating ice and near the grounding line. Sparse data coverage, and the resultant coarse resolution at the ice–ocean boundary, poses issues in our ability to model ice flow advance and retreat from the present position. In addition, as fjord bathymetry is known to exert strong control on ocean circulation and ice–ocean forcing, the lack of bed data leads to an inability to model these processes adequately. Since the release of the last complete Greenland bed topography–bathymetry product, new observational bathymetry data have become available. These data can be used to constrain bathymetry, but many fjords remain completely unsampled and therefore poorly resolved. Here, as part of the development of the next generation of Greenland bed topography products, we present a new method for constraining the bathymetry of fjord systems in regions where data coverage is sparse. For these cases, we generate synthetic fjord geometries using a method conditioned by surveys of terrestrial glacial valleys as well as existing sinuous feature interpolation schemes. Our approach enables the capture of the general bathymetry profile of a fjord in north-west Greenland close to Cape York, when compared to observational data. We validate our synthetic approach by demonstrating reduced overestimation of depths compared to past attempts to constrain fjord bathymetry. We also present an analysis of the spectral characteristics of fjord centrelines using recently acquired bathymetric observations, demonstrating how a stochastic model of fjord bathymetry could be parameterised and used to create different realisations.

The relative contributions of local and remote wind stress and air-sea buoyancy forcing to sea-level variations along the East Coast of the United States are not well quantified, hindering the understanding of sea-level predictability there. Here, we use an adjoint sensitivity analysis together with an Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) ocean state estimate to establish the causality of interannual variations in Nantucket dynamic sea level. Wind forcing explains 67% of the Nantucket interannual sea-level variance, while wind and buoyancy forcing together explain 97% of the variance. Wind stress contribution is near-local, primarily from the New England shelf northeast of Nantucket. We disprove a previous hypothesis about Labrador Sea wind stress being an important driver of Nantucket sea-level variations. Buoyancy forcing, as important as wind stress in some years, includes local contributions as well as remote contributions from the subpolar North Atlantic that influence Nantucket sea level a few years later. Our rigorous adjoint-based analysis corroborates previous correlation-based studies indicating that sea-level variations in the subpolar gyre and along the United States northeast coast can both be influenced by subpolar buoyancy forcing. Forward perturbation experiments further indicate remote buoyancy forcing affects Nantucket sea level mostly through slow advective processes, although coastally trapped waves can cause rapid Nantucket sea level response within a few weeks., (© 2022 Jet Propulsion Laboratory. California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged.)

The inventory and variability of oceanic dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) is driven by the interplay of physical, chemical, and biological processes. Quantifying the spatiotemporal variability of these drivers is crucial for a mechanistic understanding of the ocean carbon sink and its future trajectory. Here, we use the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean-Darwin ocean biogeochemistry state estimate to generate a global-ocean, data-constrained DIC budget and investigate how spatial and seasonal-to-interannual variability in three-dimensional circulation, air-sea CO 2 flux, and biological processes have modulated the ocean sink for 1995-2018. Our results demonstrate substantial compensation between budget terms, resulting in distinct upper-ocean carbon regimes. For example, boundary current regions have strong contributions from vertical diffusion while equatorial regions exhibit compensation between upwelling and biological processes. When integrated across the full ocean depth, the 24-year DIC mass increase of 64 Pg C (2.7 Pg C year -1 ) primarily tracks the anthropogenic CO 2 growth rate, with biological processes providing a small contribution of 2% (1.4 Pg C). In the upper 100 m, which stores roughly 13% (8.1 Pg C) of the global increase, we find that circulation provides the largest DIC gain (6.3 Pg C year -1 ) and biological processes are the largest loss (8.6 Pg C year -1 ). Interannual variability is dominated by vertical advection in equatorial regions, with the 1997-1998 El Niño-Southern Oscillation causing the largest year-to-year change in upper-ocean DIC (2.1 Pg C). Our results provide a novel, data-constrained framework for an improved mechanistic understanding of natural and anthropogenic perturbations to the ocean sink., (© 2022. The Authors.)

The retreat and acceleration of Greenland glaciers since the mid-1990s have been attributed to the enhanced intrusion of warm Atlantic Waters (AW) into fjords, but this assertion has not been quantitatively tested on a Greenland-wide basis or included in models. Here, we investigate how AW influenced retreat at 226 marine-terminating glaciers using ocean modeling, remote sensing, and in situ observations. We identify 74 glaciers in deep fjords with AW controlling 49% of the mass loss that retreated when warming increased undercutting by 48%. Conversely, 27 glaciers calving on shallow ridges and 24 in cold, shallow waters retreated little, contributing 15% of the loss, while 10 glaciers retreated substantially following the collapse of several ice shelves. The retreat mechanisms remain undiagnosed at 87 glaciers without ocean and bathymetry data, which controlled 19% of the loss. Ice sheet projections that exclude ocean-induced undercutting may underestimate mass loss by at least a factor of 2., (Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).)

Greenland's bed topography is a primary control on ice flow, grounding line migration, calving dynamics, and subglacial drainage. Moreover, fjord bathymetry regulates the penetration of warm Atlantic water (AW) that rapidly melts and undercuts Greenland's marine-terminating glaciers. Here we present a new compilation of Greenland bed topography that assimilates seafloor bathymetry and ice thickness data through a mass conservation approach. A new 150 m horizontal resolution bed topography/bathymetric map of Greenland is constructed with seamless transitions at the ice/ocean interface, yielding major improvements over previous data sets, particularly in the marine-terminating sectors of northwest and southeast Greenland. Our map reveals that the total sea level potential of the Greenland ice sheet is 7.42 ± 0.05 m, which is 7 cm greater than previous estimates. Furthermore, it explains recent calving front response of numerous outlet glaciers and reveals new pathways by which AW can access glaciers with marine-based basins, thereby highlighting sectors of Greenland that are most vulnerable to future oceanic forcing.

Marine-terminating glaciers control most of Greenland's ice discharge into the ocean, but little is known about the geometry of their frontal regions. Here we use side-looking, multibeam echo sounding observations to reveal that their frontal ice cliffs are grounded deeper below sea level than previously measured and their ice faces are neither vertical nor smooth but often undercut by the ocean and rough. Deep glacier grounding enables contact with subsurface, warm, salty Atlantic waters (AW) which melts ice at rates of meters per day. We detect cavities undercutting the base of the calving faces at the sites of subglacial water (SGW) discharge predicted by a hydrological model. The observed pattern of undercutting is consistent with numerical simulations of ice melt in which buoyant plumes of SGW transport warm AW to the ice faces. Glacier undercutting likely enhances iceberg calving, impacting ice front stability and, in turn, the glacier mass balance.

Analysis of ICESat-1 data (2003-2008) shows significant surface lowering of Totten Glacier, the glacier discharging the largest volume of ice in East Antarctica, and less change on nearby Moscow University Glacier. After accounting for firn compaction anomalies, the thinning appears to coincide with fast-flowing ice indicating a dynamical origin. Here, to elucidate these observations, we apply high-resolution ice-ocean modelling. Totten Ice Shelf is simulated to have higher, more variable basal melting rates. We link this variability to the volume of cold water, originating in polynyas upon sea ice formation, reaching the sub-ice-shelf cavity. Hence, we propose that the observed increased thinning of Totten Glacier is due to enhanced basal melting caused by a decrease in cold polynya water reaching its cavity. We support this hypothesis with passive microwave data of polynya extent variability. Considering the widespread changes in sea ice conditions, this mechanism could be contributing extensively to ice-shelf instability.