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Continuous winter oceanic profiling in the Cape Darnley Polynya, East Antarctica

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Abstract

Antarctic coastal polynyas provide extremely dense water to the global abyss, but the dense water formation process has been poorly monitored in winter. This study developed a new tethered profiler to realize time-series observations of the water column in the Cape Darnley Polynya, East Antarctica. The system successfully obtained temperature and salinity profiles at 10-day intervals from March to November 2017. From March to April, significant cooling and vertical mixing started, while stratification collapsed. Salinity increased rapidly from April to late-May and then gradually increased until October. Salinity development was largely consistent with the cumulative salt increase due to sea-ice production at the initial stage, but not at latter stages, indicating the influence of cross-shelf exchange. These results highlighted the potential of the measurement platform to fill the remaining gap in the global ocean monitoring network.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Mrs. Masaaki Ichikawa, Toshihiko Nakagawa, Kengo Kobayashi, Masato Kotake, Yoshimori Shimoda, and Seiji Nakao for their help in developing and refurbishing the profiler platform. Our operational successes are indebted to Mrs. Satoshi Ozawa and Tomohide Noguchi and Dr. Yasushi Fukamachi for their assistance with mooring preparation. We thank the captain, officers, crews, and researchers aboard Shirase, who all contributed to the hydrographic observations. This paper was substantially improved by two anonymous reviewers. Tethered profiler data are available through the NIPR ADS database (https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/dataset/A20200518-001). Sea ice production data is available at https://www.lowtem.hokudai.ac.jp/wwwod/polar-seaflux/. This work was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (25550002, 16K12574, 17K12811, 17H04710 and 17H06322) from the MEXT of the Japanese Government, the Science Program of Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition (JARE) as Prioritized Research Project (AJ0902), National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) through Project Research KP-303, the Center for the Promotion of Integrated Sciences of SOKENDAI, and the Joint Research Program of the Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University, Kita-19 Nishi-8, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 060-0819, Japan

    Shigeru Aoki, Kazuya Ono & Daisuke Hirano

  2. Arctic Research Center, Hokkaido University, Kita-21 Nishi-11, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 001-0021, Japan

    Daisuke Hirano

  3. National Institute of Polar Research, 10-3, Midori-cho, Tachikawa, 190-8518, Japan

    Takeshi Tamura

  4. The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, 10-3, Midori-cho, Tachikawa, 190-8518, Japan

    Takeshi Tamura

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  1. Shigeru Aoki
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  2. Kazuya Ono
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  4. Takeshi Tamura
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Correspondence to Daisuke Hirano.

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Aoki, S., Ono, K., Hirano, D. et al. Continuous winter oceanic profiling in the Cape Darnley Polynya, East Antarctica. J Oceanogr 76, 365–372 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-020-00550-w

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