Norwegian current

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North Atlantic Current (red) and Norway Current (orange)
Ocean currents in the North Sea

The Norwegian Current is an ocean current that flows from the North Sea into the European Arctic Sea and the Barents Sea . The current is the last part of the water movement initiated by the Gulf Stream and continued by the North Atlantic Current . The Norwegian Current brings relatively warm, salty water to arctic regions.

The river begins in the Skagerrak and is fed by water from the Baltic Sea and the North Sea , which is brought into the Skagerrak via the Jutland Current . As it flows north along the Norwegian coast , mostly through the Norwegian Gully and over the Norwegian coastal shelf , fresh water flows in from the Norwegian rivers and warm, salty North Sea water from the North Atlantic Current flows in. The current is limited in the west by an opposite current of North Atlantic water into the North Sea. This creates eddies that are far larger than in most coastal currents.

The current usually flows at a depth of 50 to 100 meters. It has a strongly changing flow speed, which depending on the measurement can range from 5 centimeters / second to 1 meter / second, oceanographers estimate a total flow speed of 0.3 to 0.5 meters / second. Compared to the surrounding North Sea, it is cold and low in salt, but compared to the arctic water, it is warm and salty. In winter the current has a temperature of 2 to 5 ° C, the salinity is less than 34.8 ‰. The Atlantic water of the North Sea, on the other hand, is separated by a front and has a temperature of over 6 ° C;

In years when a strong current flows north in winter, the current ensures that ice formation in the Barents Sea is greatly reduced.

Countercurrent

The warm surface current has a cooler countercurrent in the depths of the Atlantic. This overall system of a kind of "heat pump" for the northern European regions is considered by some ocean scientists to be fragile; it depends on the climatic conditions for the Gulf Stream and also on the salt input and thus on the different densities of the water. A change in this system, if it collapsed, would first affect the Norwegian Current. Oceanographers try to simulate the entire system on computers, but the results have so far been contradictory. It is only clear that if the "pump system" actually collapsed, it would be considerably cooler in Europe as a whole.

See also

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