VERTICAL AND HORIZOXTAL MOVEMENTS IN THE OCEAN 



615 



Interpretation 



What follows is purely speculative. The layers of water in adiaba- 

 tic equilibrium are considered as long-term resident waters of the 

 eastern North Atlantic; the zones of conflict contain waters in- 

 truding from elsewhere. 



Let us consider some hypotheses earlier put forward (Cooper, 

 1955a, b; 1957). Figure 9 shows schematically boluses of Greenland 

 Sea water which have spilled over the sill of the Denmark Strait 

 into the Atlantic. Similar boluses from the Iceland-Faeroe ridge 

 slipping into the Atlantic along the eastern flank of the Reykjanes 

 and mid-Atlantic ridges are visualized. 



The boundaries will not be neatly sharp as necessarily in the 

 picture but will be zones of mixing with the enveloping resident 

 waters. Thus the boluses start as relatively simple affairs, but as 



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Fig. 9. A speculative, schematic block diagram of the manner of formation of 

 boluses in the Denmark Strait. Much of the water in the main channel is cut away. 

 The internal waves within the Greenland Sea idealize a spectrum of widely variable 

 amplitude, wavelength, and direction. The subsequent descent into the deep 

 Atlantic while pinned against the continental slope of Greenland by the Coriolis 

 force is also illustrated. Submarine canyons dissecting the continental shelf of 

 Greenland ma\' also in part canalize the course of the boluses. The free surfaces 

 of the boluses ma\- respond to irregularities in the rock wall of the Greenland con- 

 tinental slope and may become blurred b>" mixing with enveloping North Atlantic 

 water. 



