Winter sea ice edge shaped by Antarctic Circumpolar Current pathways

Goosse, Hugues; Libera, Stephy; Naveira Garabato, Alberto C.; Richaud, Benjamin; Silvano, Alessandro; Vancoppenolle, Martin

doi:10.5194/tc-19-5763-2025

Articles | Volume 19, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-5763-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-5763-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 11

Research article

|

14 Nov 2025

Research article |

| 14 Nov 2025

Winter sea ice edge shaped by Antarctic Circumpolar Current pathways

Hugues Goosse, Stephy Libera, Alberto C. Naveira Garabato, Benjamin Richaud, Alessandro Silvano, and Martin Vancoppenolle

Data sets

Southern Ocean Monthly Climatology K. Yamazaki https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12697777

Daily Southern Ocean sea level anomaly and geostrophic currents from multimission altimetry, 2013-2019 M. Auger et al. https://doi.org/10.17882/81032

Short summary

The position of the winter sea ice edge in the Southern Ocean is strongly linked to the one of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and thus to ocean bathymetry. This is due to the influence of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current on the southward heat flux that limits sea ice expansion, directly through oceanic processes and indirectly through its influence on atmospheric heat transport.