| Summary: | to be submitted to Nature The warm Atlantic inflow to the Nordic Seas is essential for the temperate climate of northwestern Europe (Drange et al. 2005). It is totally transformed as it gives up its excess heat to the atmosphere north of the Greenland-Scotland Ridge (Mauritzen 1996a). The northern overturning of the Atlantic ’conveyor ’ circulation is completed by the dense water that overflows the ridge from the Nordic Seas to feed the North Atlantic deep water (Fig. 1; Hansen and Øster-hus 2000). Open ocean convection in the Greenland Sea is often considered to be a dominant component in this overturning, and thereby to have a fundamental control of the overflows and the Atlantic conveyor (Schlosser et al. 1991, Hay 1993, Marshall and Schott 1999, Rahmstorf 2002, Stouffer et al.
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