Abstract
Roughly 30% of the world ocean volume has temperatures below 2°C. Paleoceanographic data have revealed that this was not always the case. Before the Drake Passage opened due to continental drift about 30 Myr BP the climate of the ocean was considerably warmer. In the course of the establishment of the Southern Ocean in its present shape the difference between surface and bottom temperatures in equatorial regions changed from about 7°C to its present value of about 26°C (Berger 1981). The polar climate of the southern hemisphere got increasingly colder by the growth of glacial ice on the Antarctic continent and the gradual development of the sea ice cover around it. Today the seasonal cycle changes the sea ice extent in the Southern Ocean from about 3 · 106 km 2 in austral summer to 20 · 106 km 2 in austral winter, an area which is roughly as big as the North Atlantic Ocean.
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Olbers, D. (1993). Links of the Southern Ocean to the Global Climate. In: Willebrand, J., Anderson, D.L.T. (eds) Modelling Oceanic Climate Interactions. NATO ASI Series, vol 11. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-84975-6_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-84975-6_6
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