CANBERRA, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- Researchers on board an Australian vessel in the Antarctic Ocean have mapped the world's strongest current in a bid to understand how it is contributing to melting ice sheets in Antarctica.
After five weeks working onboard the research vessel (RV) Investigator, the team led by scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) - Australia's national science agency - on Tuesday said they have successfully mapped a hotspot in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC).
Flowing clockwise around Antarctica from west to east in the Southern Ocean or Antarctic Ocean, the ACC is the world's strongest current.
It has historically played a role in preventing warm water from reaching Antarctica but Benoit Legresy, the voyage chief scientist from the CSIRO, said that the mapping by ship and satellite was needed to understand how heat that is now leaking across the barrier is contributing to melting ice shelves and the potential for sea-level rise.
"We've been working in a gateway where heat is funnelled towards Antarctica, contributing to ice melt and sea level rise. We need to understand how this gate works, how much heat gets through and how this may change in the future," he said in a media release.
CSIRO researchers were joined on the voyage by colleagues from the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (AAPP).
They used the RV Investigator's multibeam echosounder system and the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite, which was launched by NASA in collaboration with France's Centre National D'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in December 2022, to map in high resolution a seafloor area of 20,000 square kilometers.
Chris Yule, a CSIRO geophysicist, said that in addition to mapping ocean currents, the team also discovered an underwater range of dormant volcanoes.
"To our delight, we've discovered a spectacular chain of ancient seamounts, comprising eight long-dormant volcanoes with peaks up to 1,500 meters high and one with a double vent," Yule said.
The team will now integrate all the data collected by the ship and satellite to help build knowledge of ocean circulation to inform climate policy. ■
