Mysterious, Cold Antarctic Water Movement Revealed in New, Detailed Simulation

Thanks to big data, scientists are getting a remarkably detailed animation of the movement of the densest and coldest water in the world. They've received a closer look at the ocean water around the Antarctic.

The movement of dense water in the Antarctic is vital. It's the most oxygenated water in the deep ocean, and its extreme density and coldness drive many of the significant currents in the major ocean basins connected to the Southern Ocean.

The distinctly different densities of water that move around Antarctica also make it important in regards to climate change. Because the most dense water forms near the surface, close to Antarctica, before descending to the ocean floor, any warming that occurs near the surface can be drawn down into the deep ocean.

In this case, the researchers took a wealth of data in order to create an animation of the movement of this water. The visualization revealed underwater ocean storms generated by eddies, waterfalls of cold dense water that plummet off the Antarctic Continental Shelf into the abyss, and underwater waves that are hundreds of meters high.

"Scientists who have seen the visualization have been astonished at the level of detail," said Andy Hogg, one of the researchers, in a news release. "But this visualization is about more than communicating the wonder of science to the public. Being able to actually see how the bottom water moves in three dimensions rather than just looking at numerical, two dimensional outputs has already opened new areas for scientific research."

The findings reveal a bit more about how the cold, dense water in the Antarctic spreads out into every ocean in the world.

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