Impact of Stratospheric Ozone on Cross Shelf Exchange around the Antarctica

It has been clearly demonstrated that changes in SH stratospheric ozone modulate the large scale circulation of the atmosphere, leading to trends that project strongly onto the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). Recent studies have suggested that this influence extends further down to the ocean and sea ice, but thus far, little attention has been paid to whether and how stratospheric ozone influences the heat transport across Antarctic shelf breaks. One reason for this is that the cross shelf exchange is mediated through meso- and submesoscale processes in the atmosphere and ocean, which are prohibitively expensive to resolve in a global model. Understanding the link between stratospheric ozone and changes in ocean and ice near the shelf, however, is critical for understanding the impact of the ozone hole on mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet and for global sea-level projection. Here we have adopted a regional modeling approach. We developed a coupled regional climate model, using the Polar-optimized Weather Research and Forecasting model (Polar WRF) for the atmosphere, the Community Land Model (CLM) for the land, the Los Alamos Parallel Ocean Program (POP) for the ocean, and the Los Alamos sea ice model (CICE) for sea ice. Our domain includes the midlatitude atmospheric jet and Antarctic circumpolar currents. To capture the influence of stratospheric ozone, we examine how the changes in the SAM influence cross shelf exchange, as well as the ocean and sea ice near the Antarctic circumpolar currents. To investigate the impact of mesoscale coupling on the cross shelf exchange, we contrast simulations conducted at different resolutions.