ANALYSIS OF THERMODYNAMICS BETWEEN THE ATMOSPHERE SEA-ICEA ROUND THE WEDDELL SEA
Thickness of the Sea Ice; Weddell Sea; Sea Ice
The polar regions have a crucial role in the planet’s climate, because constitute real sinks of energy and, as such, are essential for the redistribution of heat from the oceans and the atmosphere. The aim of this study is to evaluate the different weather and climatic conditions around the Weddell Sea region, to characterize and identify possible trends over time, and what the impact of weather and climate conditions in the physical and dynamic properties of sea ice in the same region. Thus, the numerical simulation will be used to estimate the distribution of sea ice thickness in the Weddell Sea. The study area corresponds to the Weddell Sea that is located the southernmost part of the Atlantic Ocean between the latitudes 87° 10’ S and 55° 00’ S and longitudes 84° 00’ W and 10° 00’ E. The Antarctic Peninsula (AP) and the edge of the Antarctic continent are the western and southern boundaries, respectively. The northern border extends from AP to 10° E. This area covers approximately 3.4 million of Km² corresponding approximately the size of the Weddell Turn. The daily data of Atmospheric Pressure, Cloud Fraction, Wind Speed, Wind Direction, Air Temperature at 2 meters and Dew Point Temperature of the network of meteorological stations in Antarctica, made available by Argentina Antarctic Institute. The other data are daily heat flux and radiation extracted from the reconstructed Era-Interim database. Both databases are for the period comprising January 1979 to December 2015, setting up a total of 37 years. In this proposal, statistical methods will be used, such as: the analysis of time series with the purpose of evaluating trends and seasonality; Cluster analysis to identify stations with similar patterns, since they are stations located in different regions of the Weddell Sea. Finally, numerical modeling will be used to analyze the behavior of the sea ice thickness and its possible relations with the atmospheric conditions observed in the observational stations used in this study