| Summary: | The North Water (NOW) is one of the largest polynyas in the Northern Hemisphere, occupying Smith Sound and the northern part of Baffin Bay, between Greenland and Ellesmere Island. While it has long been held that the North Water maintains itself by a southward drift of ice caused by winds and currents, the role of warm water advection by the West Greenland Current (WGC) is still heavily debated. Over 400 hydrographic CTD stations from the 1997 and 1998 NOW field programs were analysed using theta-S diagrams, property contouring and conservative property tracing in order to better understand the different water mass structures underlying the polynya, as well as their circulation and interaction. These data portray the North Water to be a crossroad in the Arctic Ocean, owing its complexity to the interaction of imported dissimilar water masses over a particularly influential terrain. Seasonal heat and freshwater budgets were also presented based on a volumetric theta-S census of the polynya domain and an elaboration of Muench's (1971) water mass definitions for northern Baffin Bay. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
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