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Southern Ocean freshened by sea ice

Nature volume 537, pages 40–41 (2016)Cite this article

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The Southern Ocean has become less salty during the past few decades. An analysis of sea-ice transport in the ocean suggests that this phenomenon can be explained by coupled changes in sea-ice drift and thickness. See Letter p.89

Previous explanations for this freshening have included a net increase in the difference between the amount of precipitation and the amount of evaporation over the ocean8, and increased input of glacial meltwater4,5. However, the former is inadequate for explaining the freshening in surface and intermediate waters of the open ocean, and the latter overestimates the freshening of deep waters. The constant movement of sea ice redistributes a substantial amount of fresh water9, so Haumann and colleagues chose to investigate the potential contribution of sea-ice transport to this observed freshening.

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Figure 1: Sea ice in the Southern Ocean.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ted Maksym is in the Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543-1050, USA.,

    Ted Maksym

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Maksym, T. Southern Ocean freshened by sea ice. Nature 537, 40–41 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/537040a

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