minus Julianehaab, for the years in question. The normal gradient 

 with its midwinter maximum is shown as a solid line. It will be seen that 

 during these years the departures from normal were great and the 

 gradient even reached negative values in January, which is normally 

 in the middle of the maximum. As these 3 years go to make up nearly 

 half of the observations on which are based the 8-year means shown in 

 table 1 and figure 5, it is not surprising that the May maximum in vol- 

 ume of flow is not evident in any of the means except section W. While 

 certainly there are other factors affecting the volume of flow of the 

 Labrador Current in the Grand Banks region, the above is considered 

 to be strong evidence that the barometric pressure gradient across the 

 Labrador Sea is a very important factor in controlling the volume of 

 flow of the Labrador Current. 



Table 1 also shows that the mean temperature of the Labrador 

 Current was decidedly higher during 1941 than the 8-year mean. This 

 is true of all occupations of all sections for the year. Figure 7 shows 

 graphically the variations in the mean temperature during 1941 for 



O \- 

 2 

 UJ 



tr a: 

 3 => o 



< 



<r 



UJ 

 Q. 



UJ o — 

 q: 



2 CD 

 < < 

 U -J 



Figure 7. — Variation in mean temperature of the Labrador Current in the Grand Banks region during 

 the 1941 season compared with mean variation, 1934-41. 



each of the sections and gives the mean variation of the mean tempera- 

 ture for the years 1934-41. It will be seen that during 1941 the mean 

 temperature of the Labrador Current exceeded the 8-year mean by 

 about 0.8° C, the excess varying from about 3^° to about 13^°. 



Attention is called to the character of the curves representing the 

 mean values for the years 1934-41. Of the 12 points representing the 

 mean values for the 3 siections, 3 are based on 4 years, 3 are based on 



10 



