Using kinetic energy measurements from altimetry to detect shifts in the positions of fronts in the Southern Ocean

Chambers, Don P.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-14-105-2018

Articles | Volume 14, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-14-105-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-14-105-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 1

Research article

|

08 Feb 2018

Research article |

| 08 Feb 2018

Using kinetic energy measurements from altimetry to detect shifts in the positions of fronts in the Southern Ocean

Don P. Chambers

Data sets

Data from: New perspectives on frontal variability in the southern ocean, Dryad Digital Repository C. C. Chapman https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q9k8r

Mapping the Antarctic polar front: weekly realizations from 2002 to 2014, links to NetCDF file and MPEG4 movie N. M. Freeman and N. S. Lovenduski https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.855640

Short summary

A novel analysis is performed utilizing ocean current kinetic energy computed from from along-track satellite altimetry data from 1993 to 2015. The position of enhanced kinetic energy is used to detect shifts in frontal positions in the Southern Ocean. Results indicate no significant shift in the front positions across the Southern Ocean, on average, although there are some localized, large movements, both north and south.