Multi-year Mooring Data: Air-Sea Flux in the Southern Ocean

What is it about?

We studied how the air and ocean exchange heat in the Southern Ocean (the ocean that surrounds Antarctica). Harsh weather conditions in the Southern Ocean make it hard to directly observe; therefore, not much is known about how the air and ocean interact in this region. We used data from a mooring (instrument-laden buoy on the ocean surface anchored to the ocean floor) installed by Ocean Observatories Initiative in February 2015 off the west coast of Chile. The data from this mooring are important because they are the farthest south instrument ever deployed for multiple years that can study how the air and ocean interact. The mooring data shows that storms bring cold, dry air, and high winds (blowing to the northeast), causing the ocean to rapidly lose heat. This heat loss makes the surface ocean more dense than the water below, forcing the deeper water to mix with the surface water. This results in a thick layer of relatively dense water that is important for absorbing and storing carbon dioxide in the deep ocean. In our results, 2015 and 2017 had significantly more winter storms that caused the ocean to lose heat than in 2016.

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