No abstract

The estimated D 13 C ant and DC ant and their relationship to each other and to water mass distribution suggest that the Polar Water entering the Nordic seas from the north is undersaturated with respect to the present atmospheric anthropogenic CO 2 levels and promotes a local uptake of C ant within the Nordic seas. In contrast, the Atlantic Water entering from the south appears equilibrated. It carries with it anthropogenic carbon which will be sequestered at depth as the water overturns. This preequilibration leaves no room for further uptake of C ant in the parts of the Nordic seas dominated by Atlantic Water. The upper ocean pCO 2 in these regions appears to have increased at a greater rate than the atmospheric pCO 2 over the last 2 decades; this is reconcilable with a large lateral advective supply of C ant .Citation: Olsen, A., et al. (2006), Magnitude and origin of the anthropogenic CO 2 increase and 13 C Suess effect in the Nordic seas since 1981, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 20, GB3027,

The Greenland Sea is one of a few sites in the world ocean where convection to great depths occurs-a process that forms some of the densest waters in the ocean. But the role of deep convective eddies, which result from surface cooling and mixing across density surfaces followed by geostrophic adjustment, has not been fully taken into account in the description of the initiation and growth of convection. Here we present tracer, float and hydrographic observations of long-lived ( approximately 1 year) and compact ( approximately 5 km core diameter) vortices that reach down to depths of 2 km. The eddies form in winter, near the rim of the Greenland Sea central gyre, and rotate clockwise with periods of a few days. The cores of the observed eddies are constituted from a mixture of modified Atlantic water that is warm and salty with polar water that is cold and fresh. We infer that these submesoscale coherent eddies contribute substantially to the input of Atlantic and polar waters to depths greater than 500 m in the central Greenland Sea.