Characteristics of hydrogen/oxygen isotopes in water masses and implications for spatial distribution of freshwater in the Amundsen Sea, Southern Ocean

Antarctica’s marginal seas are of great importance to atmosphere–ocean–ice interactions and are sensitive to global climate change. Multiple factors account for the freshwater budget in these regions, including glacier melting, seasonal formation/decay of sea ice, and precipitation. Hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) isotopes represent useful proxies for determining the distribution and migration of water masses. We analyzed the H and O isotopic compositions of 190 seawater samples collected from the Amundsen Sea during the 34th Chinese Antarctic Research Expedition in 2017/2018. The upper-oceanic structure (3%) of freshwater generally lie in the upper ~50 m and extend from Antarctica to ~65°S in the meridional direction (anomalously low freshwater proportion occurred between 68°S and 71°S). Winter Water mainly occupied the layer between 50 and 150 m south of 71°S in the western Amundsen Sea. The water structure and spatial distribution of freshwater in the upper Amundsen Sea were found influenced mainly by the rates of basal and surficial melting of ice shelves, seasonal alternation of sea ice melt/formation, wind forcing, and regional bathymetry. Owing to the distance between heavy sea ice boundary (HSIB) and ice shelves is much shorter in the western HSIB than the east HSIB, the western part of the heavy sea ice boundary includes a higher proportion of freshwater than the eastern region. This study, which highlighted the distribution and extent of freshwater derived from ice (ice shelves and sea ice) melt, provides important evidence that the offshore drift pathway of cold and fresh Antarctic continental shelf water is likely interrupted by upwelled UCDW in the Amundsen Sea