Liquid freshwater transport and Polar Surface Water characteristics in the East Greenland Current during the AO-02 Oden expedition

• Published in: Progress in Oceanography
• Main Authors: Nilsson, Johan, Bjork, Goran, Rudels, Bert, Winsor, Peter, Torres, Daniel J.
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: East Greenland Current; Late-winter observations; Freshwater transpor; Polar Surface Water; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Damocles; Greenland; Climate change; Denmark Strait; East Greenland; east greenland current; Fram Strait; oden
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/2396

Author Posting. © Elsevier B.V. , 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Progress In Oceanography 78 (2008): 45-57, doi:10.1016/j.pocean.2007.06.002. Dynamical features of the East Greenland Current (EGC) are synthesized from a survey conducted by the Swedish icebreaker Oden during the International Arctic Ocean - 02 expedition (AO-02) in May 2002 with emphasis on the liquid freshwa- ter transport and Polar Surface Water. The data include hydrography and lowered Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (LADCP) velocities in eight transects along the EGC, from the Fram Strait in the north to the Denmark Strait in the south. The survey reveals a strong confinement of the low-salinity polar water in the EGC to the continental slope/shelf—a feature of relevance for the stability of the thermo- haline circulation in the Arctic Mediterranean. The southward transport of liquid freshwater in the EGC was found to vary considerably between the sections, rang- ing between 0.01 and 0.1 Sverdrup. Computations based on geostrophic as well as LADCP velocities give a section-averaged southward freshwater transport of 0.06 Sverdrup in the EGC during May 2002. Furthermore, Oden data suggest that the liquid freshwater transport was as large north of the Fram Strait as it was south of the Denmark Strait. Financial support was provided by the Swedish Research Council (JN and GB), the Ivar Bendixson Foundation (JN), The European Commission programme ASOF-N (contract No EVK2-CT-2002-00139), ASOF-W (contract No EVK2- CT-2002-00149), DAMOCLES (contract No 0189509) (BR), the National Science Foundation (PW, through grant OPP-0352628) and a fellowship at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Ocean and Climate Change Institute (PW).