In this report, the name Arctic Bottom Water, which Stefansson 

 (1962) has used, will be employed to describe all of the waters in 

 the Greenland Sea with temperatures less than 0°C and salinities 

 close to 34.91 % . Polar Water shall mean all waters with temperatures 

 less than -1.50°C, and the term Atlantic Water will include all waters 

 with salinities greater than 35 %, . 



In the Greenland Sea, the coldest Polar Water is normally found 

 in the 'core' of the East Greenland Current, and Atlantic Water is 

 found in the 'core' of the West Spitsbergen Current. The possible 

 modes of Arctic Bottom Water formation already have been discussed. 



Other water masses have been defined, but it seems most convenient 

 to emphasize only the three described above. Properties of the remaining 

 waters can be accounted for by assuming that they are mixtures of 

 the three primary masses or that they represent the primary masses 

 or their mixtures after modification by processes occurring at the 

 surface such as ice formation and dilution by runoff and melting 

 ice. 



Although no thorough study of dissolved oxygen and micronutrient 

 distributions in the northern Greenland Sea seems to have been made, 

 some of the gross features have been described. Oxygen saturations 

 have been found to be uniformly high (Lationov et al. 1960, Nansen 

 1915, Sverdrup 1933) seldom falling below 80% even in the deepest 

 layers. Sverdrup (1933) found reactive phosphorus concentrations 

 of 0.3 to 1.3 ug-at/liter in the waters adjacent to northern Svalbard. 

 Reliable nitrate and reactive silicate data do not appear to be readily 

 available for the northern Greenland Sea. 



Recently, Russian scientists have conducted fairly comprehensive 

 surveys of the northern Greenland Sea aboard LITKE (1955) , OB (1956 

 and 1958), and LENA (1957), but the data from these cruises have 

 not been made available. 



V. DATA PRESENTATION 



1. Salinity-Temperature Diagram. 



Figure 5 shows the salinity-temperature relationships encountered 

 in the 196A EDISTO survey region. Among the features brought out 

 by this diagram are the following: 



a. The extreme Polar Water (salinity«« 3A.07%o , temperature «-1.85°C) 

 as defined by Jakhelln (1936) was not encountered. The salinity- 

 temperature diagram indicates that any of this water type which may 

 have been originally present had been altered by mixing with the 

 warmer high salinity water which lies below and to the east of the 

 East Greenland Current, or by the effects of runoff, ice-melt and 

 heating at the sea surface. 



10 



