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Video: Currents may hold the key to Antarctica’s shrinking ice

January 24, 2024

AuthorsMichael Joiner
Multimedia Editor, 360info

ContributorsHelen Phillips

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Some vision provided by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

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00:00:00:03 - 00:00:26:12
Helen Phillips
The Southern Ocean is a really special place and it's really important to us for a number of reasons. First of all, it's a place where the ocean can take up the heat and carbon that that's in the atmosphere and carry it to to deeper levels that's then distributed through the ocean. So it has this effect of reducing the impact to us on land of global warming.
00:00:26:14 - 00:00:55:05
Helen Phillips
The Southern Ocean is the space between the warm northern parts of the world and and the frozen continent of Antarctica. And there are a series of currents that flow around Antarctica through the Southern Ocean that act as barriers to keep that that heat in the north away from from the frozen continent. So the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is is one and the Antarctic slope current is another.
00:00:55:05 - 00:01:26:24
Helen Phillips
That's that's closer to Antarctica. So these for, for millennia have kept the the heat to the north like a big dam and allowed Antarctica to stay frozen. And there have always been places where that current has been leaky and has been able to get through. But we're seeing more evidence that that more heat is getting through as to the winds across the Southern Ocean get stronger and more eddies are generated.
00:01:27:01 - 00:01:54:24
Helen Phillips
So we're interested to understand the dynamics of these places that are leaky and allow that heat to get through. The focus for our voyage was halfway between Tasmania and Antarctica in one of these really key hotspots for heat leaking across the currents and towards Antarctica. So we're worried about heat leaking across the the currents because that means that more warm water is finding its way towards Antarctica.
00:01:54:24 - 00:02:32:13
Helen Phillips
And recent work has shown that the Antarctic ice shelves and sea ice are vulnerable to the warmer waters that are making their way southward. And so Antarctica holds a vast quantity of frozen ice. But as the ice shelves and sea ice around Antarctica melt away, that removes the buttressing effect of these and allows Antarctic glaciers to flow more quickly to the to the sea and then contribute to faster sea level rise.
00:02:32:13 - 00:02:46:04
Helen Phillips
So understanding the rate that ocean is that the ocean is moving heat toward Antarctica and how this is impacting the melt of Antarctic ice is one of the key research questions of the international community.

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The Antarctic Circumpolar Current usually shields Antarctica from warmer waters. That might be changing, explains Associate Professor Helen Phillips.

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Video: Currents may hold the key to Antarctica’s shrinking ice

Licensing and attribution

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Some vision provided by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

Other ways to use this visual

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