The influence of the Drygalski Ice Tongue on the local ocean

Annals of Glaciology (2017)

Here we use oceanographic data from near to the Drygalski Ice Tongue to explore the interplay between the floating glacier and the local currents and stratification.

The new observations broadly, but not directly, support the presence of a coherent Victoria Land Coastal Current. The data suggest the northward moving coastal current turns against the Coriolis force and works its way anticlockwise around the glacier, but with leakage beneath the glacier through the highly ‘rippled’ underside, resulting in a spatially heterogeneous supply to the Terra Nova Bay Polynya region – an important location for the formation of high-salinity shelf water.