Winters in Antarctica's Ross Sea have become stormier in recent decades, affecting sea-ice conditions and field operations, new University of Otago—Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka research shows.
Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers used weather station data on air pressure and temperature to monitor storm behavior from 1964 to 2024.
They found winter storms in the southwestern Ross Sea have become more frequent and intense over this period, as well as more variable—a succession of very stormy winters was interspersed every couple of years with unusually calm ones.
Stormier winters delay ice formation
Lead author Antonia Radlwimmer, who completed the study as part of her Ph.D. in Otago's Department of Physics, says that when there were very stormy winters in 2019, 2022 and 2024, the fast ice (sea ice attached to land, ice shelves or grounded icebergs) in the southern sound took noticeably longer to form because the storms kept breaking up newly formed sea ice.
Co-author Dr. Greg Leonard, of Otago's School of Surveying, says the researchers analyzed satellite imagery to determine the timing of seasonal sea-ice formation and breakup events to infer the effect of winter storminess on sea-ice thickness.
"Intense winter storms led to a reduction in fast-ice thickness in spring and early summer because the ice forms later and has less time to thicken," Leonard says.
Thinner ice complicates fieldwork
Radlwimmer says this can affect research projects.
"Spring and early summer is when we conduct field operations. Therefore, the ice we operate on is thinner than it would have been without the storms," she says.
Sea-ice conditions are critical for field operations because if the ice is too thin, then it cannot support major field camps.
This is particularly relevant in McMurdo Sound, which connects the Ross Sea to the McMurdo Ice Shelf. It is also home to New Zealand's scientific research station, Scott Base, and Antarctica's largest research facility, the U.S.'s McMurdo Station.
Gaps open in winter monitoring
"Also, winter sea-ice monitoring can only start later in the year. That means our observations are missing more of the really interesting midwinter processes," Radlwimmer says.
"It would be great to develop more monitoring techniques that work in early and midwinter, even if there isn't safe sea-ice cover to base them on."
Publication details
Antonia L. Radlwimmer et al, Increasing Winter Storminess in the Southern Ross Sea, Antarctica, and Its Impact on Land‐Fast Sea‐Ice, Geophysical Research Letters (2026). DOI: 10.1029/2026gl123090
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Citation: Antarctic storms are becoming more frequent and intense, affecting sea ice (2026, July 29) retrieved 29 July 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2026-07-antarctic-storms-frequent-intense-affecting.html
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