Antarctic Oceanology I

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Antarctic Research Series.

The Antarctic waters provide one of the extreme sets of characteristics for the world's oceans. Its waters are cold, low in salinity, dense, and high in dissolved oxygen, and, although comparable values may be found in the Norwegian Sea, it is the out-flow from the Antarctic that fills most of the deep ocean basins of the world. The interaction of these high-latitude waters with those having the characteristics of tropical or North Atlantic waters has long been one of the major studies of oceanology, yet only in the last few decades have we been able to begin to collect the appropriate data.

Recent developments, such as the acceptance of the concept of continental drift and sea floor spreading, have made the antarctic regions as important to geologists and geophysicists as to physical oceanographers and biologists.