Helland-Hansen and Nansen (1909) called the deep waters in the 

 region with temperatures between 0° and -1.3°C and a nearly uniform 

 salinity of about 34.92 % Norwegian Sea Bottom Water. They describe 

 this water mass as being formed by surface cooling and ice formation 

 during the winter and claimed that it fills more than two-thirds 

 of the volume of the Norwegian and Greenland Seas . They thought 

 that a likely site for the formation of this water mass was in the 

 central region of the Greenland Gyre and suggested that some might 

 also form in a region between Jan Mayen Island and Iceland. In 

 a later work, Nansen (1915) pointed out that there was no significant 

 difference between salinities of the Norwegian Sea Bottom Water and 

 the deep waters of the Polar Basin. This indicated that portions 

 of the Norwegian Sea Bottom Water were flowing north and filling 

 the basins of the Arctic Ocean. Nansen noted that minimum temperatures 

 (s*-0.8° to -0.9°C) of the bottom waters of the Polar Basin were 

 higher than those of the bottom water he found in the Norwegian arid 

 Greenland Seas («-1.3°C). He said that this could be explained 

 by mixing of the coldest bottom waters with warmer water or by the 

 existence of a continuous ridge between Svalbard and Greenland with 

 a sill depth of approximately 1500 meters. It should be remembered 

 that he merely said that existence of such a ridge was a possibility. 

 Erroneous salinity data had caused him to be more certain of the 

 existence of this ridge in an earlier study (Nansen 1902) . As mentioned 

 above, recent data indicate that such a ridge does not exist. 



Some of the views held by the above authors recently have been 

 questioned. Whereas Helland-Hansen and Nansen (1909) believed that 

 the bottom waters are carried to depth by an active vertical circulation, 

 Metcalf (1955) claims that they sink by flowing along isopycnal surfaces 

 only slightly inclined from the horizontal. He also (Metcalf 1960) 

 has divided the bottom waters in the Greenland Sea into two masses, 

 that formed in the Greenland Gyre and that formed in the Norwegian 

 Gyre (a large cyclonic gyre found in the Norwegian Sea) . According 

 to him, at depths below 1500 meters the bottom waters formed in the 

 Norwegian Gyre are always -0.97°C or warmer while the bottom waters 

 formed in the Greenland Gyre are always colder than -0.99°C. 



Various estimates have been made of velocities, transports, and 

 fluctuations of the major currents in the northern Greenland Sea. 

 Jackhelln (1936) and Kiilerich (1945) state that the East Greenland 

 Current is strongest in the vicinity of the Greenland Continental 

 Slope and that it attains maximum speeds of approximately 30 cm/sec. 

 Lationov, et_ al_. (1960) indicate that average speeds of this current 

 between 0-100 meters are approximately 20 cm/sec in the northern 

 Greenland Sea with maximum speeds occurring during the winter and 

 minimum speeds occurring in inshore regions during the summer. The 

 Return Atlantic Current is said to flow southward under the East 

 Greenland Current with speeds of about 1 to 2 cm/sec (Chaplygin 1959). 

 The speed of the West Spitsbergen Current at 77 °N has been estimated 

 to be about 5 to 15 cm/sec (Lationov jet al. 1960) , and its branch 

 which turns to the east near northern Svalbard is estimated to have 

 speeds of about 10 cm/sec (Sverdrup 1933) . 



