Norwegian gutter
The Norwegian Gully ( Norwegian : Norskerenna , Danish : Norskerenden ) is a channel in the North Sea . It runs west of Norway and turns south of Norway to the east into the Skagerrak . The channel is not a tectonic rift, but was created by repeated ice flows during the last 1.1 Ma .
The channel is about 700 kilometers long, at its northern end on the European continental shelf 180 kilometers wide and narrows to 45 kilometers to the south. It has a relatively even bottom that is about 250 to 300 meters deep over most of the trench, deepening to 450 meters in the north and up to 700 meters in the south.
The channel is significantly deeper than the rest of the North Sea - shortly before the transition to the Skagerrak off the Arendal coast , the deepest part of the sea is 700 meters here. The Norwegian Current flows within the channel, the current of which transports warm water from the North Sea to the European North Sea and the Barents Sea . An important current of Atlantic water flows into the North Sea on the western edge of the channel. The channel was considered to be a major obstacle to pipeline transport of North Sea oil to Norway. The Norwegian Ekofisk oil field was therefore connected to the mainland across half the North Sea with a pipeline to Germany. However, the problems have been overcome and the newer Frigg and Brent fields are draining their oil down the channel. Weak earthquakes occur regularly at the canal edges.
On the western edge of the channel there is a breeding area for North Sea mackerel . Time and again, sperm whales get stranded on the Norwegian coast, getting lost on their north-south migrations in the Atlantic through the relatively deep ditch into the North Sea, which is too shallow for them.
Initial estimates show that a large part of the pollutants discharged into the North Sea settle on the southern edge of the channel and remain there.
literature
- Jack Hardisty: The British Seas. An introduction to the oceanography and resources of the north-west European continental shelf . Routledge, London and New York, 1990, ISBN 0-415-03586-4
- Roald Sætre (Ed.): The Norwegian Coastal Current - Oceanography and Climate. Tapir Academic Press, Trondheim 2007. ISBN 978-82-519-2184-8
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans Petter Sejrup, Eiliv Larsen, Haflidi Haflidason, Ida M. Berstad, Berit O. Hjelstuen, Hafdis E. Jonsdottir, Edward L. King, Jon Landvik, Oddvar Longva, Atle Nygård, Dag Ottesen, Ståle Raunholm, Leif Rise, Knut Stalsberg: Configuration, history and impact of the Norwegian Channel Ice Stream . In: Boreas . 32, 2003, pp. 18-36. doi : 10.1080 / 03009480310001029 .