Antarctic Oceanology

The book is based on results from the Russian expedition in the region of the Antarctic Peninsula and Powell Basin in the northern part of the Weddell Sea, as well as on the review of earlier research in the region. The main goal of the research was to collect the newest data and study the physical properties and ecology of this key region of the Southern Ocean. Data analysis is supplemented with numerical modeling of the atmosphere-ocean interaction and circulation in the adjacent region, including research on rogue waves. The focus of the study was the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, currents and water properties in the Bransfield Strait and Antarctic Sound, properties of seawater, currents, ecosystem and biological communities in the Powell Basin of the northwestern Weddell Sea, and their variations. An attempt is made to reveal the role of various components of the Antarctic environment in the formation of biological productivity and maintenance of the Antarctic krill population. This is especially important as in the last decades the Antarctic environment has experienced significant changes related to the global climatic trends.

The era of the exploration of the World Ocean is not yet over: some areas still lack an adequate number of observations. The relationships between the physical, chemical and biological processes, which sustain the life on this planet, are not yet fully understood. In short, knowledge of the oceans is still far from satisfactory. This book covers an important period in the study of one of the last investigated areas of the World Ocean: the Ross Sea, Antarctica. During the 1990s, long-term experiments were conducted in this area as part of the Climatic Long-term Interaction for the Mass balance in Antarctica (CLIMA) project of the Italian National Programme for Antarctic Research (PNRA), providing a wealth of oceanographic information. This book is an outcome of the CLIMA field obser vations and international collaborations with the most important programmes in the Ross Sea-Southern Ocean area. It contributes to the st!ldies of the spatial and temporal variability of Ross Sea water masses and circulation and their relation ship with the Southern Ocean circulation. A comprehensive review of historical data is offered, and new data sets are analysed. The studies presented in this book show that much progress has been achieved during the last decade, but large gaps in our understanding of the physical processes in the Ross Sea are still to be filled. However, these studies contribute significantly to the investigation of some specific aspects regarding the circula tion of the main water masses.

This is the first book to draw together a history of science in Antarctica.

This book is dedicated to the analysis of bottom waters flows through underwater channels of the Atlantic Ocean. The study is based on recent observations of the authors, analysis of historical data, numerical modeling, and literature review. For example, studying both the measurements from the World Ocean Circulation experiment in the 1990s and recent measurements reveals the decadal variations of water properties in the ocean. Seawater is cooled at high latitudes, descends to the ocean bottom, and slowly flows to the tropical latitudes and further. This current is slow in the deep basins, but intensifies in the abyssal channels connecting the basins. The current overflows submarine topographic structures and sometimes forms deep cataracts when water descends over slopes by several hundred meters. The flow of Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) is studied on the basis of CTD sections combined with Lowered Acoustic Doppler Profiling (LADCP) carried out annually, and long-term moored measurements of currents. This book is a collection of oceanographic data, interpretation, and analysis, which can be used by field oceanographers, specialists in numerical modeling, and students who specialize in oceanography.