A study conducted during the winter of 1999 at an ice-free area off the Mertz Glacier showed that the wind scoured away the ice as it was forming and transported it up to 90 km in a day. The rate of removal of ice as it was forming amounted to an annual production of about 10 metres - far higher than in areas where the katabatic winds are less severe. Since only freshwater freezes into ice, the water that remains becomes increasingly salty, and accordingly becomes denser. Sinking to lower depths, it spills over the edge of the continental shelf and onwards down into the abyssal depths. From there it heads north, gradually warming and rising when it is well into the northern oceans.
Cold water carries more oxygen that warm, so as it rises it re-oxygenates the upper layers.
Dissolved nutrients lying in the abyssal deep are brought to the surface, providing the nutrient substratum for swarms of microscopic plankton. It is opening up new windows on ice, wind, ocean currents and biological productivity. The future for Antarctic science is an exciting one. New technologies, particularly in the field of remote sensing, will begin to contribute data on a range of phenomena including ocean productivity and ice cap thickness. Repeated surveys of plant abundance and distribution on the continent and on Heard Island, where invertebrate distribution is also being measured, will give an indication of the speed of climate change, now thought by the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change to be more rapid than previously forecast.