Changes in the Surface Salinity Gradient and Transport of the Irminger Current: The Climate Perspective

Here we use a new analysis schema, the Freshening Length, to study the transport in the Irminger Current on the east and west sides of Greenland. The Freshening Length schema relates the transports on either side of Greenland to the corresponding surface salinity gradients by analyzing climatologica...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Paldor, Nathan, Shamir, Ofer, Münchow, Andreas, Kirwan Jr., Albert D.
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-2021-100
https://os.copernicus.org/preprints/os-2021-100/
Description
Summary:Here we use a new analysis schema, the Freshening Length, to study the transport in the Irminger Current on the east and west sides of Greenland. The Freshening Length schema relates the transports on either side of Greenland to the corresponding surface salinity gradients by analyzing climatological data from a data assimilating global ocean model. Surprisingly, the warm and salty waters of the Current are clearly identified by a salinity maximum that varies nearly linearly with distance along the Current’s axis. Our analysis of the climatological salinity data based on the Freshening Length schema shows that only about 20 % of the transport east of Greenland navigates the southern tip of Greenland to enter the Labrador Sea in the west. The other 80 % disperses into the ambient ocean. This independent quantitative estimate based on a 37-year long record complements seasonal to annual field campaigns that studied the connection between the seas east and west of Greenland more synoptically. A temperature-salinity analysis shows that the Irminger Current east of Greenland is characterized by a compensating isopycnal exchange of temperature and salinity, while west of Greenland the horizontal convergence of less dense surface water is accompanied by downwelling/subduction.