Description: Measuring temperature and salinity profiles in the world's oceans is crucial to understanding ocean dynamics and its influence on the heat budget, the water cycle, the marine environment and on our climate. Since 1983 the German research vessel and icebreaker Polarstern has been the platform of numerous CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth instrument) deployments in the Arctic and the Antarctic. We report on a unique data collection spanning 33 years of polar CTD data. In total 131 data sets (1 data set per cruise leg) containing data from 10 063 CTD casts are now freely available at doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.860066. During this long period five CTD types with different characteristics and accuracies have been used. Therefore the instruments and processing procedures (sensor calibration, data validation, etc.) are described in detail. This compilation is special not only with regard to the quantity but also the quality of the data – the latter indicated for each data set using defined quality codes. The complete data collection includes a number of repeated sections for which the quality code can be used to investigate and evaluate long-term changes. Beginning with 2010, the salinity measurements presented here are of the highest quality possible in this field owing to the introduction of the OPTIMARE Precision Salinometer.

Description: The Weddell Gyre plays a crucial role in the modification of climate by advecting heat poleward to the Antarctic ice shelves and by regulating the density of water masses that feed the lowest limb of the global ocean overturning circulation. However, our understanding of Weddell Gyre water mass properties is limited to regions of data availability, primarily along the Prime Meridian. The aim of this paper is to provide a dataset of the upper water column properties of the entire Weddell Gyre. Objective mapping was applied to Argo float data in order to produce spatially gridded, time composite maps of temperature and salinity for fixed pressure levels ranging from 50 to 2000 dbar, as well as temperature, salinity and pressure at the level of the sub-surface temperature maximum. While the data are currently too limited to incorporate time into the gridded structure, the data are extensive enough to produce maps of the entire region across three time composite periods (2001-2005, 2006-2009 and 2010-2013), which can be used to determine how representative conclusions drawn from data collected along general RV transect lines are on a gyre scale perspective. The work presented here represents the technical prerequisite in addressing climatological research questions in forthcoming studies. These data sets are available in netCDF format at http://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.842876.

Description: The Weddell Gyre is a fundamental component of the global climate system, in that it supplies heat to underneath the Antarctic ice shelves, and regulates the density of water masses that feed the deepest limb of the global over-turning circulation. Here we utilise Argo float profile and trajectory data spanning the entire Weddell Gyre from 2002 to 2016, in order to determine the large-scale mean horizontal circulation and heat distribution within the upper Weddell Gyre. An elongated, double-cell, cyclonic circulation is revealed, where the eastern cell is stronger than the western cell. The transport of heat within the Warm Deep Water layer, which is the primary heat source to the Weddell Gyre, is demonstrated by diagnosing the heat budget for a 1000 m thick layer encompassing the core of Warm Deep Water. While the heat budget does not close at the resolution of the grid cells, it does close when integrated over large areas, within the range of uncertainty provided by a range of values for horizontal and vertical diffusivity. In the southern limb of the gyre, heat transport convergence due to mean horizontal advection balances with divergence due to horizontal turbulent diffusion (representative of eddy processes). In contrast, within the interior circulation cell of the Weddell Gyre, heat transport divergence due to mean horizontal advection balances with convergence due to horizontal turbulent diffusion. We show that heat is advected into the Weddell Gyre along the southern limb, some of which is diffused northwards into the interior circulation cell, while some is diffused southwards towards the shelf seas. This implies that horizontal turbulent diffusion plays a role in transporting heat towards the ice shelves. Horizontal turbulent diffusion is also a mechanism by which heat can enter the Weddell Gyre across the open northern boundary. This work highlights the importance of understanding the role of eddy processes in redistributing heat throughout the Weddell Gyre, in particular within the vicinity of the ice shelves, where basal ice melt can contribute to rising sea levels.