Polar Ocean Mixing by Internal Tsunamis

What POLOMINTS does 

The project studies how glacier calving generates internal tsunamis, within polar oceans.

Researchers will investigate how these waves mix heat, nutrients and carbon and affect marine productivity. 

From RRS Sir David Attenborough and Rothera Research Station, researchers will provide the first systematic observations of this process. They’ll use a variety of platforms from sensors on the seabed right up to satellites, and link their observations to climate models.  

Why this matters 

POLOMINTS helps us to:  

• understand which types of calving events and fjord or shelf shapes produce the strongest internal tsunamis 
• assess how tsunami-driven mixing changes heat, nutrient and carbon distribution, and how this may shift in the future 
• improve ocean models to better represent these short-lived but powerful mixing events 

When marine-terminating glaciers, glaciers that flow into the ocean, as opposed to land – calve into the sea, they create large waves under the ocean surface called internal tsunamis. When these break, the resulting mixing brings up nutrients and heat from the ocean depths into the surface waters.

Calving events of various sizes are well known, but the effect of the internal waves and mixing that they cause isn’t included in ocean or climate models.

Who is involved 

The project brings together glaciologists, oceanographers, climate modellers and marine biogeochemists. They combine field observations, experiments and computer modelling. 

The Polar Ocean Mixing by Internal Tsunamis (POLOMINTS) project is funded by a £3.7m Natural Environment Research Council grant. 

POLOMINTS will produce three key outputs:

1. Detailed mechanistic understanding of the forms/sizes of calving and fjord/shelf geometries most effective at generating internal tsunamis, enabling advances in understanding of ice/ocean interactions in climatically, biogeochemically and ecologically important regions.
2. An assessment of the regional impacts of ocean mixing from internal tsunamis on the distributions and exchanges of ocean heat, nutrients and carbon, and how this may change in future, enabling policy-relevant assessments of the implications for climate, the cryosphere and ecology.
3. Knowledge of how to represent vigorous and episodic internal tsunami-driven mixing in ocean models, thus improving model capability in relation to one of the most poorly-understood components of the Earth system

1. Underwater tsunamis focus of new study

   An international research team, led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS), has been awarded £3.7M to advance a ground-breaking study on how underwater tsunamis are triggered by glacier calving around Antarctica.

   Read more of: Underwater tsunamis focus of new study

   

1. RRS Sir David Attenborough

   Our state-of-the-art polar science ship provides scientists access to remote and challenging marine environments across the Antarctic and Arctic.

   Read more of: RRS Sir David Attenborough

   

2. Rothera Research Station

   The largest British Antarctic facility is a centre for biological research and a hub for supporting deep-field science.

   Read more of: Rothera Research Station