Antarctica: a global change perspective - Antarctica: Global Science from a Frozen Continent - page 322

Figure 11.10 Antarctica: a major driver of global change in the atmosphere and in the oceans.

(Credit: NASA)

Predictions of future climate change and its impacts require complex computer
models that integrate more and more processes. There are still major processes
occurring in Antarctica that are essential to understand and quantify if the present
uncertainties in the model outputs are to be reduced. Perhaps the most important is
the role of the Antarctic in the global ocean circulation and the transport of heat,
nutrients and carbon amongst the ocean basins. Much of this is driven by sea ice
formation and through interaction of the ocean with ice shelves. Whilst observations
from satellites are excellent at producing global coverage of surface and atmospheric
parameters, processes under the ocean surface are essentially invisible. Only very
limited ocean data are available from in-situ measurements of moorings, gliders