Observational Array for High-Resolution, Year-Round Measurements of Volume, Freshwater, and Ice Flux Variability in Davis Strait: Cruise Report for R/V Knorr 179-05, 22 September-4 October 2004

摘要

As part of the Freshwater Initiative sponsored by the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs, a team of scientists from the Applied Physics Laboratory of the university of Washington and the Bedford Institute of Oceanography are investigating freshwater exchange through Davis Strait. This 300-km-wide strait sits between Baffin Island and the west coast of Greenland and acts as the gateway for waters passing between the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and the subpolar North Atlantic. In autumn 2004 R/V Knorr cruise 179-05 undertook the first of three one-year mooring deployments. Six subsurface moorings, one off-axis sound source, eight bottom landers, and two Seagliders were deployed successfully slightly north of the Davis Strait sill. Four cross-strait hydrographic lines, complete with sampling for chemical tracers, characterized water mass variability from the southern end of Baffin Bay to the northern tip of the Labrador Sea. The moored array will be recovered, serviced, and redeployed annually for a period of at least three years.