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The current system east of the Grand Banks was intensely observed by World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) array ACM-6 during 1993–95 with eight moorings, reaching about 500 km out from the shelf edge and covering the water column from about 400-m depth to the bottom. More recently, a reduced array by the Institut für Meerskunde (IfM) at Kiel, Germany, of four moorings was deployed during 1999–2001, focusing on the deep-water flow near the western continental slope. Both sets of moored time series, each about 22 months long, are combined here for a mean current boundary section, and both arrays are analyzed for the variability of currents and transports. A mean hydrographic section is derived from seven ship surveys and is used for geostrophic upper-layer extrapolation and isopycnal subdivision of the mean transports into deep-water classes. The offshore part of the combined section is dominated by the deep-reaching North Atlantic Current (NAC) with currents still at 10 cm s−1 near the bottom and a total northward transport of about 140 Sv (Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1), with the details depending on the method of surface extrapolation used. The mean flow along the western boundary was southward with the section-mean North Atlantic Deep Water outflow determined to be 12 Sv below the σθ = 27.74 kg m−3 isopycnal. However, east of the deep western boundary current (DWBC), the deep NAC carries a transport of 51 Sv northward below σθ = 27.74 kg m−3, resulting in a large net northward flow in the western part of the basin. From watermass signatures it is concluded that the deep NAC is not a direct recirculation of DWBC water masses. Transport time series for the DWBC variability are derived for both arrays. The variance is concentrated in the period range from 2 weeks to 2 months, but there are also variations at interannual and longer periods, with much of the DWBC variability being related to fluctuations and meandering of the NAC. A significant annual cycle is not recognizable in the combined current and transport time series of both arrays. The moored array results are compared with other evidence on deep outflow and recirculation, including recent models of different types and complexity.

The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2003GC000536 Between 1996 and 1998, a concerted effort was made to study the deep open ocean convection in the Labrador Sea. Both in situ observations and numerical models were employed with close collaboration between the researchers in the fields of physical oceanography, boundary layer meteorology, and climate. A multitude of different methods were used to observe the state of ocean and atmosphere and determine the exchange between them over the experiment's period. The Labrador Sea Deep Convection Experiment data collection aims to assemble the observational data sets for an overall synthesis. A common file format and a browsable inventory have been used so as to simplify the access to the data.

Between 1996 and 1998, a concerted effort was made to study the deep open ocean convection in the Labrador Sea. Both in situ observations and numerical models were employed with close collaboration between the researchers in the fields of physical oceanography, boundary layer meteorology, and climate. A multitude of different methods were used to observe the state of ocean and atmosphere and determine the exchange between them over the experiment's period. The Labrador Sea Deep Convection Experiment data collection aims to assemble the observational data sets in order to facilitate the exchange and collaboration between the various projects and new projects for an overall synthesis. A common file format and a browsable inventory have been used so as to simplify the access to the data.

Within the context of the German CLIVAR program, an observational program in the western tropical Atlantic with shipboard sections, profiling floats and a moored array aims at studying the role of the shallow thermohaline subtropical cell (STC) in tropical-subtropical interactions and the cold water transports underneath. From 6 repeated shipboard profiling sections off Brazil near 5°S a northward warm water transport above 1100 m of 25.0 ± 4.4 Sv is determined, of which 13.4 ± 2.7 Sv occur in the thermocline layer supplying the Equatorial Undercurrent. Trajectories of 15 profiling floats released near the western boundary are presented that drift at shallow levels (200 m and 400 m) and delineate the different STC branches. For the southward flow of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) a section-mean transport of −31.7 ± 9.2 Sv was determined at 5°S. However, different from the steady NADW flow observed earlier along the topography north of the equator, the NADW currents at 5–10°S are much more variable with long periods of northward counterflow along the topography.

METEOR cruise M45 took place in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1999 and consisted of five legs. The research activities during the METEOR cruise M45/1, which started in Malaga on 19 May 1999, were related to the scientific programs CANIGO/ESTOC and DOMEST. The DOMEST project concentrates on marine technology and data transmission, mainly tested in the Canary Island region. On this cruise the CANIGO/ESTOC project concentrated on seafloor and water probing. In the morning of June 8 the RV METEOR arrived in Lisbon. During the second leg (Lisbon - St. John's) the aim was the investigation of water mass spreading and mixing within the eastern basin of the eastern North Atlantic. The work was part of the yearly field programmes of the "Sonderforschungsbereich" SFB 460. Elements of the repeat hydrographic survey in the Iceland Basin included observations with CTD and rosette sampler. For determining deep circulation and water mass transformation, nutrients and tracer samples (CFCs, tritium/helium) were taken. In addition an array of moored current meters for monitoring the Overflow Water close to the Reykjanes Ridge was recovered. The array was then partly redeployed for an additional year. RAFOS float observations for the determination of the drift of Labrador Sea Water in the eastern basin were continued during M45/2. The third leg (St. John's - St. John's) focused on the deep circulation and water mass distribution of the Labrador and Irminger seas, also within the context of the SFB 460. The distribution of water masses and circulation was studied along standard repeat sections using current profiling, hydrography and tracer (Freon, tritium/helium) observations. In the Labrador Sea, a number of tomography, convection and boundary current moorings were recovered and redeployed for measuring deep convection activity. A new moored array was deployed off the Grand Banks to measure the export of Deep Water out of the Subpolar North Atlantic. The fourth cruise leg (St. John's - Rendsburg) was devoted to mooring work and hydrographic measurements on sections normal to the southeastern slope of Greenland. It was aimed at repeatedly describing the state of the Denmark Strait overflow as one of the contributions to the EU Project VEINS on the Variability of Exchanges in the Northern Seas. Leg M45/4 METEOR ended on 1 September in the ship yard in Rendsburg. Cruise leg M45/5 started on 1 October 1999 in Bremen and ended on 3 November 1999 in Las Palmas. It was subdivided into two parts with an interim stay in Las Palmas during 20 - 22 October. During the first leg (M45/5a), sedimentological investigations and plankton sampling were carried out in the North Sea, Azores Frontal System and off Cape Ghir (NW Africa) with the purpose to collect data on the reconstruction of paleo-environmental conditions of these regions. During the second leg (M45/5b), equipment testing, mooring work and water column measurements were carried out. Water column sampling, including primary production and particle flux measurements, were carried out around the time-series station ESTOC (European Station for Time-series in the ocean, Canary Islands) as well as off Cape Ghir., METEOR-Berichte

A 12-month mooring record (May 1994–June 1995), together with accompanying PALACE float data, is used to describe an annual cycle of deep convection and restratification in the Labrador Sea. The mooring is located at 56.75°N, 52.5°W, near the former site of Ocean Weather Station Bravo, in water of 3500 m depth. This is a pilot experiment for climate monitoring, and also for studies of deep-convection dynamics. Mooring measurements include temperature (T), salinity (S), horizontal and vertical velocity, and acoustic measurement of surface winds. The floats made weekly temperature–salinity profiles between their drift level (near 1500 m) and the surface. With moderately strong cooling to the atmosphere (300 W m−2 averaged from November to March), wintertime convection penetrated from the surface to about 1750 m, overcoming the stabilizing effect of upper-ocean low-salinity water. The water column restratifies rapidly after brief vertical homogenization (in potential density, salinity, and potential temperature). Both the rapid restratification and the energetic high-frequency variations of T and S observed at the mooring are suggestive of a convection depth that varies greatly with location. Lateral variations in T and S exist down to very small scales, and these remnants of convection decay (with e-folding time 170 day) after convection ceases. Lateral variability at the scale of 100 km is verified by PALACE profiles. The Eulerian mooring effectively samples the convection in a mesoscale region of ocean as eddies sweep past it; the Lagrangian PALACE floats are complementary in sampling the geography of deep convection more widely. This laterally variable convection leaves the water column with significant vertical gradients most of the year. Convection followed by lateral mixing gives vertical salinity profiles the (misleading) appearance that a one-dimensional diffusive process is fluxing freshwater downward. During spring, summer, and fall the salinity, temperature, and buoyancy rise steadily with time throughout most of the water column. This is likely the result of mixing with the encircling boundary currents, compensating for the escape of Labrador Sea Water from the region. Low-salinity water mixes into the gyre only near the surface. The water-column heat balance is in satisfactory agreement with meteorological assimilation models. Directly observed subsurface calorimetry may be the more reliable indication of the annual-mean air–sea heat flux. Acoustic instrumentation on the mooring gave a surprisingly good time series of the vector surface wind. The three-dimensional velocity field consists of convective plumes of width 200 to 1000 m, vertical velocities of 2 to 8 cm s−1, and Rossby numbers of order unity, embedded in stronger (20 cm s−1) lateral currents associated with mesoscale eddies. Horizontal currents with timescales of several days to several months are strongly barotropic. They are suddenly energized as convection reaches great depth in early March, and develop toward a barotropic state, as also seen in models of convectively driven geostrophic turbulence in a weakly stratified, high-latitude ocean. Currents decay through the summer and autumn, apart from some persistent isolated eddies. These coherent, isolated, cold anticyclones carry cores of pure convected water long after the end of winter. Boundary currents nearby interact with the Labrador Sea gyre and provide an additional source of eddies in the interior Labrador Sea. An earlier study of the pulsation of the boundary currents is supported by observations of sudden ejection of floats from the central gyre into the boundary currents (and sudden ingestion of boundary current floats into the gyre interior), in what may be a mechanism for exchange between Labrador Sea Water and the World Ocean.

METEOR-Berichte