Tracing the greenland-scotland overflow water in the north atlantic.

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Project objective

The Nordic Seas and the Labrador Sea are important areas contributing to the ventilation of the World Ocean. The objective of this project is to study the intermediate water masses from the Nordic Seas region as it spreads into the sub-polar gyre of the western North Atlantic. A chemical tracer was released in the Greenland Sea at intermediate depths during the EU financed ESOP-2 programme in 1996. This tracer has tagged central Greenland Sea Intermediate Water, which contributes to the overflow of dense water across the Greenland-Scotland ridge to the North Atlantic. The overflow water is thus tagged with the tracer. This fact provides an unique opportunity to study the relative importance of the dense water masses with an origin in the Nordic Seas for the formation of North Atlantic Deep Water, the transport southward in the Deep Western Boundary Current and the mixing between dense water masses from South and north of the Greenland-Scotland ridge The intrusion of tracer from the Greenland Sea provides further an opportunity to study the large-scale circulation within the sub-polar gyre of the North Atlantic. This project aim at study the evolution of the tracer field in the western North Atlantic by taking samples from German hydrographic vessels operating in the area. This project will bridge German national founded projects (SFB 460), which provides hydrographic vessels, with the EU financed project, TRACTOR, which focuses on the tracer field in the Nordic Seas .

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

• Institut fuer Meereskunde an der Universitaet Kiel · KIELCoordinatorGermany

Links

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