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Fifteen profiling floats were injected into the deep boundary current off Labrador. They were ballasted to drift in the core depth of Labrador Sea Water (LSW) at 1500-m depth and were deployed in two groups during March and July/August 1997. Initially, for about three months, the floats were drifting within the boundary current, and the flow vectors were used to determine the mean horizontal structure of the Deep Labrador Current, which was found to be about 100 km wide with an average core speed of 18 cm s[sup -1]. North of Flemish Cap the boundary current encounters complicated topography around "Orphan Knoll," and there the LSW outflow splits up into different routes. One obvious LSW path is eastward through the Charlie Gibbs Fracture Zone and another route is a narrow recirculation toward the central Labrador Sea. A surprising result was that none of the floats were able to follow the boundary current southward to the Grand Banks area and exit into the subtropics. Trajectories and temperature profiles of the eastward drifting floats indicate the importance of the North Atlantic Current for dispersing the floats, even at the level of LSW. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Labrador Sea is one of the few regions of the World Ocean where deep convection takes place. Several moorings across the Labrador continental slope just north of Hamilton Bank show that convection does take place within the Labrador Current. Mixing above the lower Labrador slope is facilitated by the onshore along-isopycnal intrusions of low-potential-vorticity eddies that weaken the stratification, combined with baroclinic instability that sustains slanted mixing while restratifying the water column through horizontal fluxes. Above the shelf break, the Irminger seawater core is displaced onshore while the stratification weakens with the increase in isopycnal slope. The change in stratification is partially due to the onshore shift of the “classical” Labrador Current, baroclinic instability, and possibly slantwise convection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Repeated hydrographic observations between 1996 and 2001 of the deep water mass distribution on four sections in the western Labrador Sea and northwestern North Atlantic at about 56°N, 53°N, 48°N and 43°N show significant changes in the water mass characteristics. These changes are spreading southward mainly with the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC). Shallower convection forms a convective water mass known as upper Labrador Sea Water (ULSW). During periods of deep convection in the Labrador Sea, ULSW was described to be formed in the western boundary current region. In the post deep convection period 1996 to 2001 ULSW was formed in the western and central Labrador Sea and spreads mainly westward towards and along the western boundary. At 53°N ULSW moves southward as a part of the deep Labrador Current, also constituting the upper part of the DWBC. In the early 1990s the deep convection produced a large volume of deep Labrador Sea Water (LSW) which filled intermediate layers of the central region of the Labrador Sea. After these years the convection became weaker, with no apparent LSW renewal in 1996, partial mixing down to 1500 m in 1997 and no notable LSW formation between 1998 and 2001. At the southwestern exit of the Labrador Sea at 53°N the deep LSW in 2001 was least in thickness and highest in salinity and temperature compared to the years since 1996. This reflects restratification which resulted in an increase in the density stratification between 1000 and 2000 m in the central Labrador Sea as well as year-to-year transformation of the LSW core. LSW passes 43°N off the Grand Banks about 1 to 2 years after it was first seen at 56°N. At the 48°N and 43°N sections the northward flowing North Atlantic Current (NAC), farther offshore than the DWBC, complicates the property distributions. Saltier and warmer LSW recirculates northward with the NAC at 43°N. Between 1996 and 2001 the Gibbs Fracture Zone Water (GFZW) turned colder and fresher. The Denmark Strait Overflow Water (DSOW) showed two periods of cooling and freshening, separated by an abrupt (rapid) increase in temperature and salinity within a year. The arrival time of this increase at the different locations implies a DSOW spreading time that is no more than two years from 56°N to 43°N near the western boundary, or four years from the sill of the Denmark Strait to the Grand Banks. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]