Browsing by Author "Eriksson, Patrick B."

The Weddell Sea on the Antarctic coast is one of the most important areas of deep-water formation in the oceans. The processes that result in deep-water formation depend on the sea area's oceanic transport mechanisms and on the climatological conditions. The primary purpose of this master’s thesis is to calculate the prevailing current conditions and to estimate changes in the water-mass properties in the Weddell Sea. This was performed by using hydrographic data collected during the SWEDARP 88/89 expedition. The first part of the thesis includes a literature study on the oceanographic conditions in the Weddell Sea. The study describes the conditions that regulate the Weddell Sea's circulation field and characteristic oceanographic processes. Transport calculations were performed by applying geostrophic methodology to data from the station network in the southwestern Weddell Sea. First, the baroclinic flow field was determined with the assumption that the cyclonic circulation of the Weddell Sea flows in a clockwise direction through each transect of the gyre. The barotropic component of the current field was then calculated using an inverse method which balances the transports through the measurement transects by meeting given criteria. These were that the transport of salt and mass is equal through each measurement transect. The total volume transport in the Weddell gyre was calculated to be about 19 Sverdrup (1 Sv = 10^6 m^3/s), which is about 60% of the transport estimated in the literature. The formation of Weddell Sea Bottom Water (WSBW) was estimated to 1.4 Sv. The primary result of the study was the amount of heat released from the water column to the atmosphere within the measurement area. The heat loss was calculated to 12 TW (terawatt). The unique SWEDARP 88/89 stations measured in the Filchner depression on the continental shelf would deserve further analysis and would enrich the studies of the global deep-water circulation.