West Antarctic Ice Shelf- Ocean Interactions

The synthesis focused on the strikingly different environments on and near the cold Ross Sea and warm Amundsen Sea continental shelves, where available measurements reach back to 1911 and 1994, respectively. On the more extensively covered Ross Sea continental shelf, multiple reoccupations of ocean stations and transects since the 1950s were used to extend our knowledge of ocean thermohaline change and variability.

The more rugged Amundsen Sea continental shelf contains the earth's fastest melting ice shelves, which Holland et al (2019) show can be linked to decadal-scale variability in the tropical Pacific, and Jacobs et al. (2021) document as being the primary influence on freshening downstream in the Ross Sea. Recent and potential future rates of sea level rise are the primary broad-scale impacts revealed by the observations of ice and ocean changes in these study areas.