Sentences with phrase «point shelf water»

In the ocean the effect of the polynya is the massive production of salty, freezing point shelf water that is the prime ingredient in the formation of the globally important Antarctic Bottom Water and associated ventilation of the world ocean.

Not exact matches

If the water remained in the channel, the water would eventually cool to a point where it was not melting much ice, but the channels allow the water to flow out to the open ocean and warmer water to flow in, again melting the ice shelf from beneath.

The point of the mission, which involves researchers from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), the British Antarctic Survey, Oxford University, and other UK - based institutions, is to determine how much glacial ice is drifting into the ocean, and to gain a better understanding of how water is mixing and behaving across the front of the shelf.

The rise and fall of sea level over the millennia, coupled with natural karst topography and clear waters, results in a diverse submarine seascape of patch reefs, fringing reefs, faros, pinnacle reefs, barrier reefs as well as off - shelf atolls, rare deep water coral reefs and other unique geological features such as the Blue Hole and Rocky Point where the barrier reef touches the shore.

When pulses of warm water are strong enough to rise over the shelf's outer ridge, that warm dense water then flows downward to the grounding point of the glacier and remains there until a new equilibrium is established via basal melting and a retreating grounding point.

The ice shelves themselves have a certain structure — they rest on the sea floor but as they extend out from the continent eventually the ice lifts off the sea floor (called the grounding point) and as the ice extends out further it is floating on top of the water.

Meanwhile, fewer than a dozen small ice shelves floating on «warm» waters (seawater only a few degrees above the freezing point) produced half of the total melt water during the same period.

In addition to much less multiyear ice than normal, Pokrovsky points towards the warm inflow of Atlantic water into the Arctic that may have impacted ice conditions over the western Siberian shelves.