Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
© The Author(s), 2016. This is the author's version of the work and is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers 112 (2016): 94-112, doi:10.1016/j.dsr.2016.02.007.
Description:
We present the first results from a densely instrumented mooring array upstream of the Denmark Strait
sill, extending from the Iceland shelfbreak to the Greenland shelf. The array was deployed from September
2011 to July 2012, and captured the vast majority of overflow water denser than 27.8 kgm-3 approaching
the sill. The mean transport of overflow water over the length of the deployment was 3.54
± 0.16 Sv. Of this, 0.58 Sv originated from below sill depth, revealing that aspiration takes place in
Denmark Strait. We confirm the presence of two main sources of overflow water: one approaching the
sill in the East Greenland Current and the other via the North Icelandic Jet. Using an objective technique
based on the hydrographic properties of the water, the transports of these two sources are found to be
2.54 ± 0.17 Sv and 1.00 ± 0.17 Sv, respectively. We further partition the East Greenland Current source
into that carried by the shelfbreak jet (1.50 ± 0.16 Sv) versus that transported by a separated branch of
the current on the Iceland slope (1.04 ± 0.15 Sv). Over the course of the year the total overflow transport is more consistent than the transport in either branch; compensation takes place among the pathways that
maintains a stable total overflow transport. This is especially true for the two East Greenland Current
branches whose transports vary out of phase with each other on weekly and longer time scales. We argue
that wind forcing plays a role in this partitioning.
Description:
The mooring and analysis work was supported by NSF OCE research grants
OCE-0959381 and OCE-1433958, by the European Union 7th Framework Programme (FP7 2007-2013)
under grant agreement n. 308299 NACLIM, and and by the Research Council of Norway through the
Fram Centre Flaggship project 6606-299.
Description:
2017-03-24
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
