DOI: 10.5061/dryad.q9k8r
title: Data from: New perspectives on frontal variability in the southern ocean

description: The frontal structure of the Southern Ocean is investigated using the
 Wavelet/Higher Order Statistics Enhancement (WHOSE) frontal detection
 method, introduced in Chapman (2014). This methodology is applied to 21
 years of daily gridded absolute dynamic topography (ADT) data to obtain
 daily maps of the locations of the fronts. By forming frontal occurrence
 frequency maps and then approximating these occurrence-maps by a
 superposition of simple functions, the time-mean locations of the fronts,
 as well as a measure of their capacity to meander, are obtained and
 related to the frontal locations found by previous studies. The spatial
 and temporal variability of the frontal structure is then considered. The
 number of fronts is found to be highly variable throughout the Southern
 Ocean, increasing (‘splitting’) downstream of large bathymetric features
 and decreasing (‘merging’) in regions where the fronts are tightly
 controlled by the underlying topography. These splitting/merging events
 are related to changes in the underlying frontal structure whereby regions
 of high frontal occurrence cross or spread over streamfunction contours.
 In contrast to the number of fronts, frontal meandering remains relatively
 constant throughout the Southern Ocean. Little to no migration of the
 fronts over the 1993-2014 time period is found, and there is only weak
 sensitivity of frontal positions to atmospheric forcing related to the
 Southern Annular Mode or the El Niño Southern Oscillation. Finally, the
 implications of these results for the study of cross-stream tracer
 transport is discussed.
description: ssh_front_climatology_1993Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_1993.ncssh_front_locations_1994Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.SSH front locations 1995Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_1995.ncSSH front locations 1996Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_1996.ncSSH front locations 1997Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_1997.ncSSH front locations 1998Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_1998.ncSSH front locations 1999Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_1999.ncSSH front locations 2000Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_2000.ncSSH front locations 2001Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_2001.ncSSH front locations 2002Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_2002.ncSSH front locations 2003Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_2003.ncSSH front locations 2004Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_2004.ncSSH front locations 2005Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_2005.ncSSH front locations 2006Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_2006.ncSSH front locations 2007Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_2007.ncSSH front locations 2008Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_2008.ncSSH front climatology 2009Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_2009.ncSSH front locations 2010Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_2010.ncSSH front locations 2011Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_2011.ncSSH front locations 2012Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_2012.ncSSH front locations 2013Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_2013.ncSSH front locations 2014Southern Ocean front locations obtained from AVISO gridded SSH using the WHOSE method.ssh_front_locations_2014.nc