The hemispheric and regional atmospheric circulation influences the Southern Ocean in many and profound ways, including intense air-sea fluxes of momentum, energy, fresh water and dissolved gases. The Southern Ocean ventilates a large fraction of the world ocean and hence these influences are spread globally. We use the NCEP-2 reanalysis data set to diagnose aspects of the large-scale atmospheric structure and variability and explore how these impact on the Southern Ocean. We discuss how the ‘Southern Annular Mode’ and the ‘Pacific-South American’ pattern influence the Southern Ocean, particularly in the eastern Pacific. We review the importance of atmospheric eddies in Southern Ocean climate, and the role they play in the transport of mechanical energy into the ocean. The fluxes of fresh water across the air-sea boundary influence strongly the processes of water mass formation. It is shown that climatological precipitation exceeds evaporation over most of the Southern Ocean. When averaged over the ocean from 50°S to the Antarctic coast the annual mean excess is 0.80 mm day−1. The magnitude of the flux displays only a small measure of seasonality, and its largest value of 0.92 mm day−1 occurs in summer.

Hydrological measurements from three cruises during the summers 1994/95, 1995/96 and 1997/98 in the western sector of the Ross Sea allow summer and year to year changes in heat and salt content in the Terra Nova Bay polynya to be analysed. Changes in the surface layer (upper pycnocline) followed the expected seasonal pattern of warming and freshening from the beginning to the end of the summer. These near-surface changes, expressed as net heating and salting rate, were about 11 W m−2 and -6 mg salt m−2 s−1. The heating changes were substantially lower than the estimated heat supplied by the atmosphere during the summer, which underlines the importance for this season of the advective component carried by the currents in the total heat budget. The year to year differences were about one or two orders of magnitude smaller than the seasonal changes in the surface layer. In the intermediate and deep layers, the summer heat and salt variability were of the same order as or one order higher than from one summer to the next. The differences in sign and magnitude for the heat change in the upper and in the lower pycnocline indicate a weak connection in the summer period between the surface heat fluxes and the deep waters. A local source of very cold water (with temperatures below the surface freezing point) of about 0.3 Sv has been detected close to the Terra Nova Bay coast. It arose out of the interaction of the shallow–intermediate layers of High Salinity Shelf Water with the coastal glaciers. The presence and the variability of this cold water point to the significant role of the thermohaline properties of Terra Nova Bay waters in controlling the floating glacier by governing the basal melting processes.