HR: 0800h
AN: OS41A-0472    [Abstracts]
TI: Meridional Overturning Exchange with the Nordic Seas
AU: Hansen, B
EM: bogihan@frs.fo
AF: Faroese Fisheries Laboratory, Noatun, Torshavn, FO-110 Faroe Islands
AU: * Osterhus, S
EM: ngfsso@uib.no
AF: Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Allegata 70, Bergen, N-5007 Norway
AB: The flow of Atlantic water towards the Arctic crosses the Greenland-Scotland Ridge in three current branches. By the heat that it carries along, it keeps the subarctic regions abnormally warm and by its import of salt, it helps maintain a high salinity and hence high density in the surface waters as a precondition for thermohaline ventilation. In mid 1990's an extensive monitoring program for all three branches was lunched as a Nordic contribution to WOCE and is still going on. The western branch, the Irminger Current, has been monitored by means of traditional current meters moorings on a section crossing the current northwest of Iceland. A number of ADCPs have been moored on a section going north from the Faroes, crossing the Faroes Current. The eastern branch, the Continental Slope Current, is monitored by ADCPs moorings across the Faroe-Shetland Channel. CTD observations from research vessels along all the current meter sections are obtained on seasonal basis. Here we present for the first time the results from all the branches and offer numbers for the Atlantic water transport as well as seasonal and interannual variations. In addition we offer numbers for the dense overflowe trough the faroe Bank Channel.
UR: http://www.bjerknes.uib.no/research/MOEN/index.html
DE: 4294 Instruments and techniques
DE: 4512 Currents
DE: 4532 General circulation
DE: 4540 Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes
DE: 0930 Oceanic structures
SC: Ocean Sciences [OS]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting