Scientists have discovered a new branch of a global "ocean conveyor"

A team led by Kjetil Waage (Kjetil Vage) from the University of Bergen (Norway) has established that they have learned over – North-Iceland stream, as it turned out, returns to the equator as much cold water as the main component and the "pipeline" in the North Atlantic – East Greenland Current. The authors believe that their discovery will improve our understanding of how the "ocean conveyor" responding to climate change. Prior to that, it was believed that fresh, cold water from the Arctic Ocean to the Atlantic, only two ways – skirting the western coast of Greenland in the form of the Labrador Current and the eastern shore of the "green island" through the Danish Straits in the form of the East Greenland Current. These streams of water close the northern part of the "ocean conveyor" – one of the key mechanisms that determine global climate. "Conveyor" refers to a system of interconnected deep currents that carry water effectively around the world ocean. The main engine of the pipeline – thermohaline ('temperature and salinity ") mechanism, whose essence is to circulate water through the differential density of the inhomogeneity of temperature and salinity in the ocean. In 2004, two Icelandic oceanographer from this group of scientists Hedin Valdimarsson (Hethinn Valdimarsson) of the Marine Research Institute in Reykjavik and Steyngrimur Jonsson (Steingrimur Jonsson) from the University of Akureyri have opened yet another cold current in the Danish Straits, which they called the North Icelandic flow ( North Icelandic Jet). Waage and his colleagues measured the velocity and salinity of this flow during the two expeditions to the ship, "Knorr" and "Bjarni Simundsson" in 2008 and 2009. Scientists collected water samples from different depths, and measured the temperature and salinity of the samples. Oceanographers had a total of nine series of measurements of flow direction and velocity of water off the coast of Iceland and Greenland. They found that the North Icelandic stream produced off the north coast of Iceland, moving parallel to the East Greenland Current and carries about 3 billion gallons of water per second, which is about one-tenth of that brings the Gulf Stream. This course is located at a depth of 500-700 meters, at a distance of 25-60 kilometers from the coast of Iceland. Stable low temperature water indicates its Arctic origin, while the waters of the East Greenland Current are composed of a mixture of warm Atlantic and cold Arctic waters. Modeling the movement of currents showed that a significant part of the North Icelandic stream formed by the cooling and sinking of coastal waters to a depth of the warm Irminger – offshoots of Ge EPO Atlantic Current. In general, the North Icelandic flow is much denser and colder than the East Greenland current, which indicates that this trend affects the "ocean conveyor" to a greater extent than the East Greenland Current.