Summary
Antarctic sea ice plays a pivotal role in the global climate system. Forming a highly-dynamic reflective and insulative blanket that varies seasonally from ~3 to ~20 × 106 km2, sea ice and its snow cover strongly modify ocean–atmosphere fluxes and interaction processes (Bourassa et al. 2013). Moreover, brine rejection into the underlying ocean during sea ice formation leads to the generation of Antarctic Bottom Water in areas of high sea ice production that contributes to the global ocean overturning circultion (Johnson 2008). Antarctic sea ice also acts as a protective buffer for ice shelves against potentially destructive ocean swells (Massom et al. 2018) and modulates the interaction of warm deep waters with ice shelf basal cavities to affect melt there (Timmermann and Hellmer 2013; Stewart et al. 2019).
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