Line W: Monitoring the North Atlantic Ocean's Deep Western Boundary Currents

Located on the continental slope south of New England (near 40ºN, 70ºW) Line W is one component of a long-term climate observing system investigating the deep limb of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). Combining an array of moored instruments with shipboard observations, Line W is designed to directly measure the time dependence of volume transport, advection of property anomalies, and propagation of topographic Rossby waves and boundary waves in the equatorward flowing deep western boundary current (DWBC). These measurements are key to clarifying the deep ocean response to variability in high-latitude air-sea exchanges and, ultimately, the ocean's role in global climate variability through changes in its transport of heat and freshwater.