Freshwater fluxes in the East Greenland Current: A decade of observations

Over a decade of mooring measurements in the western Fram Strait at 78°50′N shows that the annual mean liquid freshwater flux (FWF) in the East Greenland Current is relatively constant at −1274 ± 453 km3 yr−1 (−40.4 ± 14.4 mSv) despite the fact that the annual mean total volume transport of the EGC has more than doubled since 2001. This is shown to be due to an increase of the transport in the deeper ocean and the fact that the largest FW content is present on the East Greenland shelf and not in the core of the EGC. In order to capture the FWF on the shelf modeling results of NAOSIM are included showing that a mean contribution of FWF on the shelf of at least −807 ± 357 km3 yr−1 (−25.6 ± 11.3 mSv) should be added to the FWF obtained for the EGC. When compared to the extra input of freshwater required to account for the 1960–1990 freshening of the northern North Atlantic, the observed variations in the 1998–2008 EGC liquid freshwater fluxes are small.