Sentences with phrase «saltier water mass»

A very cold but relatively fresh water layer covers a much warmer and saltier water mass, thus acting as an insulating layer,» explains Prof. Dr. Mojib Latif, head of the Research Division at GEOMAR.

Not exact matches

The study also found that the warming of the upper 300 meters (roughly 1,000 feet) of the Northwest Atlantic increases salinity due to a change in water mass distribution related to a retreat of the colder, fresher Labrador Current and a northerly shift of the warmer, saltier Gulf Stream.

The argument is that the increased separation of the Antarctic land mass from South America led to the creation of the powerful Antarctic Circumpolar Current which acted as a kind of water barrier and effectively blocked the warmer, less salty waters from the North Atlantic and Central Pacific from moving southwards towards the Antarctic land mass leading to the isolation of the Antarctic land mass and lowered temperatures which allowed the ice sheets to form.

The key to this model lies in the distribution of precipitation on Earth, with maxima in the tropics and in high latitudes, so that the Arctic receives an excess of precipitation over evaporation of about one third, which is associated with the permanent presence of the low salinity surface water mass of the Arctic Ocean, separated by a halocline from the saltier Atlantic water below.

This makes it clear to what extent the variability in the inflow of «warm and salty» North Atlantic water at times of positive values of the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) dominates the temperature of the Atlantic water mass by importing «vast quantities of heat» into the Arctic Ocean to induce core temperatures in the intermediate layer in Nansen Basin that are much warmer than in the Canadian Basin, far downstream.