Antarctic sea ice: Its development and basic properties

The author reports investigations on sea ice properties carried out during a number of expeditions into the Weddell Sea, Antarctica. The results provide important baseline data, against which possible changes in the Antarctic sea ice cover as induced by climatic changes can be compared. This paper concentrates on results dealing with the textural properties and the ice thickness distributions of Antarctic sea ice. In addition, the author looks at the contribution of meteoric ice (snow ice) to the sea ice cover by means of δ18O measurements. While changes in extent and thickness are to be expected as a result of possible climatic warming, they propose that the amount of snow ice will serve as an additional indicator of such changes