Ethan Campbell, 2016, Geosciences

Ethan Campbell ’16

Under the guidance of Professor Stephen Riser of the University of Washington’s School of Oceanography, I spent the summer analyzing data from Argo profiling floats drifting in the Weddell Sea region of Antarctica. The Weddell Sea is an area of great interest due to its marginal stability and influence on global heat, carbon, and freshwater budgets, yet it is historically under-sampled. Its remote location and sea ice cover continue to hinder shipborne observation; however, the recent development of autonomous floats has enabled year-round profiling of the region, even from beneath winter sea ice. While exploring temperature and salinity measurements from this array of floats, I found evidence of dynamical processes near the seamount, or underwater mountain, known as Maud Rise. Multiple signatures of these processes were apparent, including a halo of persistent low sea ice concentration and warm, upwelled water in the vicinity of the seamount. In addition to this finding and other discoveries, I spent much of the summer preparing the Argo data set for further quantitative analysis for my upcoming Geosciences junior paper, which I look forward to writing.