The University of Southampton is part of a major new EU-funded project that aims to revolutionise our understanding of the Southern Ocean.
Southampton is one of 27 research institutions from around the world taking part in the €8.5 million project called SYNCHRONY.
The Southern Ocean and the Antarctic shelf seas have been undergoing massive changes for several years. Sea ice cover is declining dramatically, large parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet are being lost, and deep-water formation appears to be declining.
But scientists still cannot reliably predict what happens next, or what it means for the rest of the planet.
The four-year project aims to change this by establishing an internationally coordinated and synchronised observation system in the Southern Ocean and the coastal regions of Antarctica.
The team at Southampton, including Regius Professor Alberto Naveira Garabato and Dr Alessandro Silvano , will use the latest satellite technology coupled with in situ observations to better reconstruct changes in ocean circulation and sea ice.
"The Southern Ocean is one of the hardest places on Earth to observe and is changing faster than many of us expected," says Dr Silvano. "By bringing together expertise and sustained measurements from across the international community, the SYNCHRONY programme will help us to better capture changes across different parts of the Southern Ocean and over time.
"This will help us improve climate models and better understand how Earth's climate is likely to evolve in the coming decades."
The British contingent also includes the British Antarctic Survey, the National Oceanography Centre, and the University of Edinburgh.
The Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Germany is coordinating the project. Principal investigator Prof. Dr. Alexander Haumann from AWI said: "The full implications of these abrupt changes for the local and global climate and the ecosystems remain unclear. We are currently unable to predict these changes.
"This knowledge gap is largely due to insufficient observational data and the inaccurate or missing representation of processes in Earth system models. Urgent action and enhanced international cooperation are therefore required not only to better observe and understand the complex changes in the coupled ocean-ice-atmosphere-biosphere system, but also to provide the basis for political decision-making that will protect this region in the long term."
SYNCHRONY is one of several global initiatives over the coming years to close this gap including Antarctica InSync, the 5th International Polar Year 2032/2033, and the implementation of the European Ocean Pact.
