Baffin Island and West Greenland Current Systems in Northern Baffin Bay

• Main Authors: Kelly K. Falkner, Humfrey Melling
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Baffin Bay; Baffin Island; Canada; Greenland; Lancaster Sound; Nares; Baffin; Nares strait
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.690.9293; http://muenchow.cms.udel.edu/papers/MuenchowBaffinRevised_2cols.pdf

Temperature, salinity, and direct velocity observations from northern Baffin Bay are presented from a summer 2003 survey. The data reveal interactions between fresh and cold Arctic waters advected southward along Baffin Island and salty and warm Atlantic waters advected northward along western Greenland. Geostrophic currents estimated from hydrography are compared to measured ocean currents above 600 m depth. The Baffin Island Current is well constrained by the geostrophic thermal wind relation, but the West Greenland Current is not. Furthermore, both currents are better described as current systems that contain multiple velocity cores and eddies. We describe a surface-intensified Baffin Island Current seaward of the continental slope off Canada and a bottom-intensified West Greenland Current over the continental slope off Greenland. Acoustic Doppler current profiler observations suggest that the West Greenland Current System advected about 3.8±0.27 Sv (Sv=106 m3s−1) towards the north-west at this time. The most prominent features were a surface intensified coastal current advecting 0.5 Sv and a bottom intensified slope current advecting about 2.5 Sv in the same direction. Most of this north-westward circulation turned southward in the Baffin Island Current System. The Baffin Island system was transporting 5.1±0.24 Sv to the south-east at the time that includes additional contributions from Nares Strait to the north (1.0±0.2 Sv) and Lancaster Sound to the east (1.0±0.2 Sv). Net freshwater fluxes were 72 and 187 mSv for the West Greenland and Baffin Island currents, respectively.