There will be two sessions on the Southern Ocean at next year’s EGU General Assembly (7-12 April 2019). The submission deadline for abstracts is 10 January 2019, 13:00 CET.

OS1.5/BG3.3/CL2.04 “The Southern Ocean in a changing climate: open-ocean physical and biogeochemical processes”

The Southern Ocean around the latitudes of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is a key region for the uptake, storage and lateral exchanges of heat, carbon and nutrients, with significant impacts on the climate system as a whole. The role of the Southern Ocean as a sink of anthropogenic carbon and heat and as a source of natural carbon in present and future climate conditions remains uncertain. To reduce this uncertainty, understanding the processes underlying the Southern Ocean internal variability and its response to external forcing is critical. Recent advances in observational capabilities, circulation theories, and numerical models are providing a deeper insight into the three-dimensional patterns of Southern Ocean change. This session will discuss the current state of knowledge and novel findings concerning the role of the Southern Ocean in past, present and future climates. This includes e.g. studies of physical, biological and biogeochemical ocean processes as well as of ocean-atmosphere interactions.

Solicited speaker: Anja Studer, University of Basel, Switzerland

Conveners: Lavinia Patara, Judith Hauck, Dan Jones, Chris Turney

Abstract submission: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2019/session/30206

OS1.6/CR6.2 “Under cover: The Southern Ocean’s connection to sea ice and ice shelves”

In recent years the interaction between the ocean and the cryosphere in the marginal seas of the Southern Ocean has become a major focus in climate research. Questions such as “Why does Antarctic sea ice not decline?”, “What controls the inflow of warm water into ice shelf cavities?”, and “How does this affect ice sheet stability and sea level?” have attracted scientific and public attention. Recent advances in observational technology, data coverage, and modeling provide scientists with new opportunities to understand the mechanisms involving ice-ocean interaction in the far South much better. Processes on the Antarctic continental shelf have been identified as missing links between the cryosphere and the deep open ocean that need to be captured in large-scale and global model simulations. This session calls for studies of the Southern Ocean’s marginal seas including the Antarctic continental shelf and ice shelf cavities. Physical and biogeochemical interactions between ice shelves, sea ice and the open ocean are of major interest, as are consequences for the greater Antarctic climate system. This includes work on all scales, from local to basin-scale to circumpolar. Studies based on in-situ observations and remote sensing as well as regional to global models are welcome. We particularly invite cross-disciplinary topics involving physical and biological oceanography, glaciology or biogeochemistry.

Conveners: Torge Martin, Xylar Asay-Davis, Nadine Steiger, Ralph Timmermann

Abstract submission: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2019/session/30209