A continuous pathway for fresh water along the East Greenland shelf
Date
2020-10-21Author
Foukal, Nicholas P.
Concept link
Gelderloos, Renske
Concept link
Pickart, Robert S.
Concept link
Metadata
Show full item recordCitable URI
https://hdl.handle.net/1912/26406As published
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abc4254DOI
10.1126/sciadv.abc4254Abstract
Export from the Arctic and meltwater from the Greenland Ice Sheet together form a southward-flowing coastal current along the East Greenland shelf. This current transports enough fresh water to substantially alter the large-scale circulation of the North Atlantic, yet the coastal current’s origin and fate are poorly known due to our lack of knowledge concerning its north-south connectivity. Here, we demonstrate how the current negotiates the complex topography of Denmark Strait using in situ data and output from an ocean circulation model. We determine that the coastal current north of the strait supplies half of the transport to the coastal current south of the strait, while the other half is sourced from offshore via the shelfbreak jet, with little input from the Greenland Ice Sheet. These results indicate that there is a continuous pathway for Arctic-sourced fresh water along the entire East Greenland shelf from Fram Strait to Cape Farewell.
Description
© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Foukal, N. P., Gelderloos, R., & Pickart, R. S. A continuous pathway for fresh water along the East Greenland shelf. Science Advances, 6(43), (2020): eabc4254, doi:10.1126/sciadv.abc4254.
Collections
Suggested Citation
Foukal, N. P., Gelderloos, R., & Pickart, R. S. (2020). A continuous pathway for fresh water along the East Greenland shelf. Science Advances, 6(43), eabc4254.The following license files are associated with this item: