The Southern Ocean has its own circulation features - that is, the movement of water since Antarctica is located in the south. In this case, it works like an ice compressor: water comes to the Antarctic shelf, goes aground to the coast, is cooled by ice and goes down, and a new one comes in its place. Thus, the water in the ocean is constantly circulating.

But this does not happen in all parts of the ocean - in West Antarctica, due to the features of the seabed topography, a powerful branch leaves the circumpolar current, and this is a very fast and warm stream. Water from it enters the shelf faster and in large quantities, does not have time to cool down and goes back to the ocean uncooled, while causing the melting of ice shelves.

One of the tasks of scientists in Antarctica, for example oceanologists from the Russian Laboratory of the Southern Ocean, is to search for new areas of bottom water formation - that is, just such places where water cools under the influence of a continental glacier and sinks to the bottom. There are four such regions now, and the existence of one of them was discovered and proved by the scientists from the Laboratory. Now they are not only looking for new areas, but also tracking changes in existing ones, measuring the activity of processes.