In recent years the interaction between the ocean and the cryosphere in the marginal seas of the Southern Ocean has become a major focus in climate research. Questions such as "Why has Antarctic sea ice only recently begun to decline?", "What controls the inflow of warm water into ice shelf cavities and how does it interact with the ice?", and “What are the dominant processes in ice-ocean boundary layers?” have attracted scientific and public attention. Recent advances in observational technology, data coverage, and modeling provide scientists with a better understanding of the mechanisms involving ice-ocean interactions of various types in the far South. Processes on the Antarctic continental shelf have been identified as missing links between the cryosphere, the global atmosphere and the deep open ocean that need to be captured in large-scale and global model simulations. Similarly, our limited knowledge of processes in ice-ocean boundary layers, such as heat and salt fluxes that control the melt rate, has been identified as a limitation on our ability to fully understand, let alone parameterize melting and freezing at interfaces between the ocean and ice shelves, icebergs, glaciers, and sea ice.

This session includes studies of the Southern Ocean's marginal seas including the Antarctic continental shelf and ice shelf cavities, as well as process studies with a particular focus on ice-ocean boundary layers and on all scales, from the ice-ocean interface to local to basin-scale to circumpolar. Physical and biogeochemical interactions between ice shelves, sea ice and the open ocean will be presented, along with their impacts on the greater Antarctic climate system. Presentations include theoretical studies as well as those based on in-situ observations, remote sensing, and process-scale, regional and global models. While the primary focus of the session is on ice-ocean interactions, we also includes contributions on ice-covered freshwater lakes.