Formation mechanism of the Weddell Sea Polynya and the impact on the global abyssal ocean

An experiment using a global ocean–ice model with an interannual forcing data set was conducted to understand the variability in the Southern Ocean. A winter-persisting polynya in the Weddell Sea (the Weddell Polynya, WP) was simulated. The process of WP breaking out after no-WP years was explored using the successive WPs found in the late 1950s. The results suggested that the anomalously warm deep water, saline surface layer, and a cyclonic wind stress over the Maud polynya region in early winter are essential for the surface layer to be dense enough to trigger deep convections which maintain a winter-persisting polynya; also, the reanalyzed surface air temperature (SAT) over the observed polynya region is too high for an ocean–ice model’s bulk formula to yield sufficient upward heat fluxes to induce WP formation. Therefore the Weddell Polynya, a series of WPs observed from satellite in the mid-1970s, is reproduced by replacing the SAT with a climatological one. Subsequent to the successive WP events, density anomalies excited in the Weddell Sea propagate northward in the Atlantic deep basins. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is enhanced through the increased meridional density gradient. The enhanced ACC and its meandering over the abyssal ridges excite buoyancy anomalies near the bottom at the southwestern end of the South Pacific basin. The buoyancy signals propagate northward and eventually arrive in the northern North Pacific.