in table 1 and discussed in connection with other measurements 

 of the Labrador Current. The rest of the section has been exam- 

 ined in a similar manner. The West Greenland Current, which 

 lies between approximately station 4605 and the beach at Cape 

 Farewell, was computed to have a volume of flow of 5.28 million 

 cu.m/sec, a mean temperature of 3.68° C and a heat transport 

 of 19.41 million cu.m. degrees C/sec. These units will be used 

 in the remainder of the discussion without further repetition. In 

 Bulletin No. 35 of this series mean curves of seasonal variation 

 were presented for the volume of flow of the West Greenland Cur- 

 rent and its components of East Greenland Current (assumed to 

 have a constant mean temperature of 3.2° C) and of Irminger 

 Current (assumed to have a constant mean temperature of 5.5° C) . 

 If these curves are taken as normals, then for the time of year 

 when the section was occupied in 1951 the normal volume of flow 

 would have been 4.48 (made up of 1.47 East Greenland Current 

 water and 3.01 Irminger Current water) with a mean temperature 

 of 4.74° C, and a heat transport of 21.26. Thus in 1951 the West 

 Greenland Current was above normal in volume transport and 

 subnormal in mean temperature and slightly subnormal in heat 

 transport. 



A critical examination of the velocity section, however, leads 

 to the conclusion that of the 5.28 volume of flow of the West Green- 

 land Current only the inshore 4.50 is contributed from the north- 

 eastward of Cape Farewell and at least 0.78 is a more direct con- 

 tribution from the waters nearby and to the southeastward of 

 Cape Farewell. The volume transport of 4.50 is therefore consid- 

 ered to include the contributions from the East Greenland Current 

 and the Irminger Current and may possibly also include some water 

 from the outer margins of the North Atlantic eddy which has re- 

 curved westward before reaching the vicinity of Iceland. The 

 mean temperature of the 4.50 volume of flow was 3.77°. Assum- 

 ing the same constant mean temperatures of the East Greenland 

 Current and Irminger Current components which were used in 

 deriving the mean seasonal variation curves we arrive at the vol- 

 ume transports of 3.38 and less than 1.12 for the contributions from 

 the East Greenland and Irminger Currents respectively. These 

 values are to be compared with the seasonal normals of 1.47 and 

 3.01 mentioned above. Reference is made to figure 10 for a 

 schematic representation of the circulation deduced above. 



Between the outer margins of the Labrador Current and the 

 West Greenland Current there was computed to be a net south- 

 easterly flow of 0.81. This is considered to have its origin in the 

 early recurving of the outer margin of the West Greenland Cur- 

 rent passing the Cape Farewell section. Thus the net flow out 

 of the Labrador Sea at this section exceeded the inflow past the 



52 



