Abstract
The advent of under-ice profiling float and biologging techniques has
enabled year-round observation of the Southern Ocean and its Antarctic
margin. These under-ice data are often overlooked in widely used
oceanographic datasets, despite their importance in understanding
seasonality and its role in sea ice changes, water mass formation, and
glacial melt. We develop a monthly climatology of the Southern Ocean
(south of 40°S and above 2,000 m) using Data Interpolating Variational
Analysis, which excels in multi-dimensional interpolation and consistent
handling of topography and horizontal advection. The climatology
successfully captures thermohaline variability under sea ice, previously
hard to obtain, and outperforms other observation-based products and
state estimate simulations in data fidelity, with smaller
root-mean-square errors and biases. To demonstrate its multi-purpose
capability, we present a qualitative description of the seasonal
variation, including 1) the surface mixed layer, 2) the water mass
volume census, 3) the Antarctic Slope Front, and 4) shelf bottom waters.
Particularly, the circumpolar variation in the extent of dense shelf
water and the annual volume overturning rate of water masses are
revealed for the first time. The present work offers a new monthly
climatology of the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic margin, which will
be instrumental in investigating the seasonality and improving ocean
models, thereby making valuable winter observations more accessible. We
further highlight the quantitative significance of under-ice data in
reproducing ocean conditions, advocating for their increased use to
achieve a better Southern Ocean observing system.