southernocean.ai

#Southern Ocean AI Meta

#Southern ocean | Encircles Antarctica | Waters south of 60° S latitude | Covers ca. 21.96 million square kilometers | The fourth largest ocean basin | Antarctic Circumpolar Current (AAC) flows through it | ACC significantly influences global ocean circulation by connecting Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans | Average depth of approximately 3,270 meters (10,728 feet) | Maximum depth of 7,434 meters (24,390 feet) at Factorian Deep

#Supergyre

#Super ocean current

#Ocean circulation

#Connecting main ocean basins of Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean

#Antarctic Circumpolar Current

#Marine biodiversity

#Isolating Antarctic fauna

#Weddell gyre

#Ross gyre

#Gyre distributes heat between equator and poles

#Gyre playspart in upwelling of deep, cold ocean waters to surface

#Southern Ocean is shaped like ring and not bounded by land

#Weddell and Ross gyres are part of aomplex global ocean circulation

#Machine learning algorithm

#Seamount

#Identifying icebergs

#Iceberg calving

#Tracking icebergs throughout their lifecycle until their demise

#Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)

#Microwave signal transmitted from space

#Intensity of reflected radiation measured

#Crystalline structure of ice and snow on iceberg surface show up as strong, bright signals in satellite images

#Images collected day or night and through cloud cover

#AI algorithms performed on different satellite images taken over12-month period

#Amundsen Sea Embayment

#Thwaites Glacier

#West Antarctic Ice Sheet

#Calving of icebergs from ice sheet into Southern Ocean

#Increasing levels of calving signal increasing contribution to sea level rise

#AI approach to identify changes in numbers, size and pathways of icebergs as consequences of climate change

#Digital Twins

#Automated underwater vehicles

#Polar science

#Artificial intelligence (AI) combined with physical oceanography

#More acidic water from deep sea rising to surface

#Sea snails susceptible to aciditation

#Shells are made of aragonite

#Ross Sea

#Digital Twin of Southern Ocean

#Cryosphere

#Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem (VME) | One nautical mile in radius | Hub of biodiversity | Made up of organisms especially vulnerable to bottom-fishing gear | Refuge for life forms stressed by rapidly warming ocean

#Fast ice | Stationary sea ice remaining attached to coastline or among grounded icebergs | Covering extensive areas of Southern Ocean

#Algae growing in fast ice

#Very large currents found in Southern Ocean can tilt ocean layers allowing warm surface waters to more easily slip down deep

#Agentic AI | Artificial intelligence systems with a degree of autonomy, enabling them to make decisions, take actions, and learn from experiences to achieve specific goals, often with minimal human intervention | Agentic AI systems are designed to operate independently, unlike traditional AI models that rely on predefined instructions or prompts | Reinforcement learning (RL) | Deep neural network (DNN) | Multi-agent system (MAS) | Goal-setting algorithm | Adaptive learning algorithm | Agentic agents focus on autonomy and real-time decision-making in complex scenarios | Ability to determine intent and outcome of processes | Planning and adapting to changes | Ability to self-refine and update instructions without outside intervention | Full autonomy requires creativity and ability to anticipate changing needs before they occur proactively | Agentic AI benefits Industry 4.0 facilities monitoring machinery in real time, predicting failures, scheduling maintenance, reducing downtime, and optimizing asset availability, enabling continuous process optimization, minimizing waste, and enhancing operational efficiency

#Global ocean warming

#Rising ocean heat content | Profound impacts on almost every aspect of the ocean, from physical processes, to biogeochemical balances, to marine biodiversity and ecosystems

#Earth energy imbalance | Grew by 0.29 watts per square metre per decade between 1993-2022 | Earth is out of energy balance | Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are trapping excess heat and preventing it from being released into space | Heat building-up of heat in the Earth climate system | Most of building-up is absorbed by ocean

#Ocean surface heat | Satellite measurements of gravity and surface height | Space geodesy | Accurate, long term and broad estimates of changes in amount of heat stored in ocean

#Critical minerals in Artificial Intelligence | At the core of AI transformation lies a complex ecosystem of critical minerals, each playing a distinct role | Boron: used to alter electrical properties of silicon | Silicon: fundamental material used in most semiconductors and integrated circuits | Phosphorus: helps establish the alternating p-n junctions necessary for creating transistors and integrated circuits | Cobalt: used in metallisation processes of semiconductor manufacturing | Copper: primary conductor in integrated circuits | Gallium: used in compound semiconductors such as gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium nitride (GaN) | Germanium: used in high-speed integrated circuits and fibre-optic technologies | Arsenic: employed as a dopant in silicon-based semiconductors | Indium phosphide: widely used in optical communications | Palladium: used in production of multi-layer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) | Silver: the most conductive metal used in specialised integrated circuits and circuit boards | Tungsten: serves as a key material in transistors and as a contact metal in chip interconnects | Gold: used in bonding wires, connectors, and contact pads in chip packaging | Europium: enables improved performance in lasers, LEDs, and high-frequency electronics essential to AI systems and optical networks | Yttrium: improves the efficiency and stability of materials like GaN and InP, supporting advanced applications in photonics, high-speed computing, and communications technologies

#Southern Ocean Heat Burp in a Cooling World | Simulating several hundred years of net-negative emissions and gradual global cooling | Abrupt discharge of heat from Southern Ocean modeled | Global mean surface temperature increase of several tenths of degrees lasting for more than a century modeled | Ocean heat burp reasoned to originate from heat previously accumulated under global warming in deep Southern Ocean | Multi-centennial scale climate simulations | Question of the durability of oceanic storage of heat and carbon more urgent as ocean warming is accelerating | As atmospheric CO2 strongly decreases and atmospheric temperature declines, carbon and heat stored in the ocean start to return to the ocean surface | The majority of interior ocean waters ultimately returns to Southern Ocean surface and is reexposed to atmosphere in Southern Ocean | In Southern Ocean density layers outcrop at ocean surface, directly connecting surface to interior ocean thereby regulating oceanic exchange with atmosphere | Combined with persistent large-scale upwelling, Southern Ocean is prominent candidate for release of heat and carbon from ocean interior under reversal of atmospheric CO2 and global cooling | 40% of oceanic uptake of carbon | 80% of oceanic uptake of heat | Earth system model | Mass and energy conserving University of Victoria model UVic | Simulations of long time scales and carbon cycle feedbacks | UVic features atmospheric energy-balance model, ocean circulation and sea-ice model, land biosphere and ocean biogeochemistry with two plankton groups | Horizontal resolution: 3.6 × 1.8 | Ocean model; 19 vertical z-layers with increasing thicknesses over depths from 50m to 500m | Ocean Heat Release Causes Warm Period | Accumulated Heat Pushing up in Southern Ocean | Large-scale upwelling of deep waters in Southern Ocean keep surface temperatures comparatively cool | Southern Ocean serves as window to atmosphere, abruptly releasing heat during event and driving global surface warming and top of atmosphere energy loss, causing heat burp | Climate and Earth system models do not simulate changes in ice sheets and consequently miss the effect of freshwater input to ocean associated with ice sheet mass loss under global warming | Melt water discharge from Antarctic ice sheet triggered by global warming will have an additional, long-lasting freshening effect | Model used lacks a full response of the wind | Model also misses cloud feedbacks | Research underlines both importance of Southern Ocean in climate system and its response to changes in climate system beyond heat and carbon uptake under contemporary rising global temperatures | It is important to continue to improve process understanding of how waters return from interior Southern Ocean and what determines their properties | Interactive ice sheets needed | Observational data collection needed | Deep Argo observing waters below 2,000 m depths needed | Ack: research-unit Biogeochemical Modeling and funding by European Research Council (ERC)