43 



normal volume. As a part of the West Greenland Current enters 

 Baffin Bay across Da\^s Strait Ridge it is probable that this excessive 

 rate of flow was communicated to the Baffin Land Current, with the 

 resultant increase in volume of flow and minimum temperature noted 

 in the Labrador Current in the Grand Banks sector during the season 

 of 1936. 



The significance of such a flood of the West Greenland Current in 

 relation to the quantity of berg ice subsequently appearing in the 

 Grand Banks region is as yet obscure. Two oppositely direct effects 

 are at once suggested. The greater heat transfer northward along 

 the Greenland coast will tend to release accumulations of pent-up 

 bergs. On the other hand warmer temperatures should hasten the 

 disintegration of the bergs during their long travel to the Grand 

 Banks. The first effect of the flood in question was probably to 

 sweep the American side clean of bergs in 1935 and to free large num- 

 bers of bergs along the Greenland side. The latter bergs probably 

 spent the winter of 1935-36 in the vicinity of Melville Bay and can 

 be expected to winter near Cape Dier 1936-37 appearing in the Grand 

 Banks region during the season of 1937. It wdU be of interest to note 

 whether the higher temperatures during the interval of travel, 1935- 

 37, will outweigh, through more rapid disintegration of the bergs, the 

 effect of a greater number of bergs freed and result in a net increase or 

 decrease of berg ice on the Banks as reflected in the discrepancy be- 

 tween the actual berg count and the number forecast on purely 

 meteorological considerations. 



Temperature-salinity relations are frequently helpful in tracing and 

 identifying water masses. In the region of the Grand Banks, where 

 two major ocean currents of different characteristics (the Labrador 

 Current and the Atlantic Current) closely approach each other, we are 

 concerned chiefly with the fluctuations in the boundary between them 

 and the departures of that boundary from its normal position. The 

 data accumulated during the seasons of 1934, 1935, and 1936 have 

 been examined and salinity anomalies determined. The anomalies 

 are departures from the T-S relation for the western North Atlantic 

 above 4° C, and for the Chesapeake Bay-Bermuda section between 

 2° and 4° C, as shown by Iselin (Papers in Phys. Oceanog. and Met. 

 M. I. T. and W. H. O. I., vol. IV, no. 4, pp. 41 and 87. Aug. 1936. 

 Cambridge). Examination shows a characteristic tongue of maximum 

 salinity anomaly at intermediate depths of about 800 meters in the 

 Atlantic Current, grading off to characteristic negative anomalies in 

 the Labrador Current. The position of the projection, on a horizontal 

 surface, of the zero anomaly line in the axis of maximum anomaly has 

 been taken as a criterion of the boundary between Atlantic Current 

 water and Labrador Current water. Figure 30 shows the course of 

 this zero anomaly line for each of the nine surveys carried out during 



149346—38 i 



