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Conference Paper

Unsupervised classification identifies coherent thermohaline structures in the Weddell Gyre region

Authors

Jones,  Dani
IUGG 2023, General Assemblies, 1 General, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), External Organizations;

Sonnewald,  Maike
IUGG 2023, General Assemblies, 1 General, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), External Organizations;

Zhou,  Shenjie
IUGG 2023, General Assemblies, 1 General, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), External Organizations;

Hausmann,  Ute
IUGG 2023, General Assemblies, 1 General, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), External Organizations;

Meijers,  Andrew
IUGG 2023, General Assemblies, 1 General, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), External Organizations;

Rosso,  Isabella
IUGG 2023, General Assemblies, 1 General, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), External Organizations;

Boehme,  Lars
IUGG 2023, General Assemblies, 1 General, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), External Organizations;

Meredith,  Michael
IUGG 2023, General Assemblies, 1 General, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), External Organizations;

Naveira Garabato,  Alberto
IUGG 2023, General Assemblies, 1 General, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), External Organizations;

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Citation

Jones, D., Sonnewald, M., Zhou, S., Hausmann, U., Meijers, A., Rosso, I., Boehme, L., Meredith, M., Naveira Garabato, A. (2023): Unsupervised classification identifies coherent thermohaline structures in the Weddell Gyre region, XXVIII General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) (Berlin 2023).
https://doi.org/10.57757/IUGG23-0136


Cite as: https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_5016414
Abstract
The Weddell Gyre is a prominent feature of the Southern Ocean and an important component of the planetary climate system; it regulates air-sea exchanges, controls the formation of deep and bottom waters, and hosts upwelling of relatively warm subsurface waters. It is characterised by extremely low sea surface temperatures, ubiquitous sea ice formation, and widespread salt stratification. At present, the remote and often sea-ice-covered Weddell Gyre is one of the most poorly-sampled regions of the global ocean, highlighting the need to extract as much information as possible from existing observations. Here, we apply a profile classification model (PCM), which is an unsupervised classification technique, to a Weddell Gyre profile dataset to identify coherent regimes in temperature and salinity. We find that, despite not being given any positional information, PCM identifies four spatially coherent thermohaline domains that can be described as follows: (1) a circumpolar class, (2) a transition region between the circumpolar waters and the Weddell Gyre, (3) a gyre edge class, and (4) a gyre core class. We also find signatures of Circumpolar Deep Water inflow and the presence of Weddell-Scotia Confluence waters. Compared with the circumpolar class, the transition class is relatively more affected by brine rejection from sea ice formation and the associated vertical mixing. By using PCM to examine the structure of the Weddell Gyre, we show that PCM can act as a useful hypothesis generation tool and a complement to existing expertise-driven approaches for characterising oceanographic data.