The vast opening in Antarctica’s winter sea ice was the Maud Rise polynya, an area of open ocean in the Weddell Sea. It formed through a combination of ocean heat, seafloor topography and strong cyclonic winds: winds helped pull the ice apart, while ocean circulation brought heat and salt toward the surface, helping the opening persist instead of quickly refreezing.
What the Maud Rise polynya was
A polynya is an area of open water or greatly reduced sea ice within a region otherwise covered by ice. The Maud Rise polynya formed in the interior of the winter ice pack, near Maud Rise, an underwater seamount in the Weddell Sea. That makes it an open-ocean polynya, not a coastal opening created simply by wind pushing ice away from shore.
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NASA’s Terra satellite captured the opening on 25 September 2017. NASA reported that it grew from about 9,500 square kilometres in mid-September to about 80,000 square kilometres by late October 2017. A separate 2022 study describes maximum extents above 50,000 square kilometres for the 2016 and 2017 events; the figures refer to different reporting contexts and should not be treated as a single identical measurement. NASA Earth Observatory; Zhou et al., 2022
How the opening formed and stayed open
1. The ocean and ice were primed before the opening
The opening did not begin with a sudden storm acting on an otherwise unchanged ice cover. Satellite analysis by Zhou and colleagues found anomalous thinning in early winter, in some cases beginning up to four months before a polynya opened. Their study links the thinning mainly to ocean thermodynamic forcing, assisted by wind, and reports comparatively warm, salty upper-ocean conditions in polynya years. Entrainment—mixing that brings warmer water upward into the surface layer—was the primary process supplying extra heat in the two recent events they analyzed. Zhou et al., 2022
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2. Winds helped pull the sea ice apart
Cyclones can drive sea ice in different directions around their centres, creating divergence and exposing water between ice floes. NASA’s account of the 2017 event describes cyclonic winds as an important opening force. Diana Francis, the scientist who led the cited cyclone study, told NASA that “cyclonic winds drag the floating sea ice in opposite directions around the cyclone center, creating the opening.”
This helps explain the contrast between events: NASA’s account describes the 2016 opening as small and short-lived, while in 2017 atmospheric heat transport was stronger and more consistent, and cyclones were more frequent and intense. Those conditions helped produce a larger opening and keep it open longer. NASA Earth Observatory
3. Seafloor shape and currents carried heat upward
Maud Rise’s underwater topography affects the currents flowing through the region. The Weddell Gyre, a large circulating current system, helped bring relatively warm, salty deep water upward near the seamount. That heat melted ice from below and fed mixing in the upper ocean. As NASA Goddard emeritus scientist Joey Comiso put it, “the shape of the seafloor causes the ocean current driven by the Weddell Gyre to bring warm water up to the upper layer of the ocean and causes the sea ice to melt.” NASA Earth Observatory
4. Salt helped sustain mixing after ice melted
Melting sea ice adds fresh water to the surface. A fresher surface layer is more buoyant and can resist mixing with saltier water below, which can limit the upward transfer of ocean heat. A 2024 study identified a process that helped counter this tendency at Maud Rise: turbulent eddies moved salt onto the seamount, and wind-driven Ekman transport helped carry it toward the northern flank where the polynya first formed. The added salt helped sustain mixing that brought heat upward, helping the open water persist.
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The study’s lead, University of Gothenburg physical oceanographer Fabien Roquet, described the event as “a complex interaction between the unique geography of the ocean floor and an unusually strong wind that produced unusually strong ocean currents transporting heat and salt water towards the surface.” University of Gothenburg, summarizing the 2024 study; Narayanan et al., 2024
Why it was not simply a hole blown open by a storm
The wind-driven movement of ice helps explain how open water appeared, but it does not by itself explain the full sequence. Ocean heat had already thinned the ice; topography and circulation supplied heat from below; and salt transport helped maintain mixing after melting freshened the surface. The studies emphasize different stages of this interacting system rather than identifying one cause that explains everything: the 2022 analysis highlights early thinning and ocean thermodynamics, while NASA’s account emphasizes cyclones and ocean dynamics, and the 2024 study details salt transport’s role in persistence.
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Coastal polynyas often form when offshore winds move ice away from land. Maud Rise was far from shore, so its formation depended on the interaction of winds, sea ice and ocean circulation around the seamount. NASA Earth Observatory
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the event does—and does not—tell us about climate
Polynyas expose ocean water to the atmosphere, enabling exchanges of heat and gases. Dense water formed in the region can also spread into the wider ocean. Those processes make open-ocean polynyas important to ocean circulation, but the cited accounts do not quantify a global climate effect from this particular opening or establish a net carbon-removal effect.
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The studies cited here explain the 2016 and 2017 Maud Rise events through event-specific atmospheric and ocean processes. They do not establish that global warming directly caused this particular hole to open. University of Gothenburg, 2024; Zhou et al., 2022
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