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The history of a cluster of large icebergs on leaving the Weddell Sea pack ice and their impact on the ocean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2023

Grant R. Bigg Open the ORCID record for Grant R. Bigg [Opens in a new window]  and
Robert Marsh
Grant R. Bigg*
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK
Robert Marsh
Affiliation:
School of Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton, European Way, Southampton SO14 3ZH, UK
*
grant.bigg@sheffield.ac.uk
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Abstract

The life history and oceanic impact of three very large icebergs that escaped together from the Weddell Sea sea ice, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, are traced from March 2014. Despite the initial proximity of these three icebergs, they followed very different trajectories across the South Atlantic until their eventual break-up and melting 1 year later. The largest, giant iceberg, B17a, spent extensive periods grounded near two different islands. The triplet's gradual melting is examined through the impact on the icebergs' dimensions, but also the meltwater's oceanic influence on the local salinity and primary productivity. It is found that there was generally a significant local surface and mixed-layer freshening of a few tenths of a practical salinity unit, up to several hundred kilometres away from the 10–20 km-sized icebergs. In contrast, the chlorophyll impact was highly temporally variable, although it tended to be larger in the summer. Break-up of these large icebergs did not occur until near the end of their life. We also show that modelling the trajectories of individual very large icebergs can be reasonable for up to 2 weeks if the characteristics of the iceberg and the local ocean and atmospheric forcing are well known.

Keywords

divergenceiceberg-island interactionicebergsocean fertilizationocean salinitySouth Atlantic
Type
Earth Sciences
Information
Antarctic Science , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , June 2023 , pp. 176 - 193
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Antarctic Science Ltd

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