Northward cooling and freshening of the warm core of the West Spitsbergen Current

Abstract

The narrow slope-confined warm core of the West Spitsbergen Current (WSC) is a major pathway for warm and saline Atlantic Water to enter the Arctic Ocean. Long-term mean northward cooling and freshening rates in the warm core of the WSC are calculated with error ranges, and heat loss estimates are derived. The observed combination of cooling and freshening is not consistent with a hypothesis of pure isopycnal offshore mixing, but rather suggests influence from diapycnal mixing connected, for example, to exchange with shelf waters.