Circulation of Baffin Bay and Hudson Bay waters on the Labrador shelf and into the subpolar North Atlantic

Duyck, Elodie; Foukal, Nicholas P.; Frajka-Williams, Eleanor

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-21-241-2025

Articles | Volume 21, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-21-241-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-21-241-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 1

Research article

|

28 Jan 2025

Research article |

| 28 Jan 2025

Circulation of Baffin Bay and Hudson Bay waters on the Labrador shelf and into the subpolar North Atlantic

Elodie Duyck, Nicholas P. Foukal, and Eleanor Frajka-Williams

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-21-241-2025-supplement

Data sets

ETOPO 2022 15 Arc-Second Global Relief Model NOAA https://doi.org/10.25921/fd45-gt74

Global Drifter Program quality-controlled 6-hour interpolated data from ocean surface drifting buoys R. Lumpkin and L. Centurioni https://doi.org/10.25921/7ntx-z961

Sea ice concentration daily gridded data from 1978 to present derived from satellite observations Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.3cd8b812

Full EGC-DrIFT 6h interpolated dataset E. Duyck and M. F. De Jong https://doi.org/10.25850/nioz/7b.b.ff

EUMETSAT Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility, Global sea ice concentration interim climate data record 2021–onwards (v3.0, 2022) EUMETSAT https://doi.org/10.15770/EUM_SAF_OSI_0014

Model code and software

Code - Circulation of Baffin Bay and Hudson Bay waters on the Labrador Shelf and into the subpolar North Atlantic E. Duyck https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14103680

jLab: A data analysis package for Matlab, v.1.7.3 J. M. Lilly https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4547006

M_Map: A mapping package for MATLAB, v1.4m R. Pawlowicz https://www.eoas.ubc.ca/~rich/map.html

Short summary

This study uses drifters – instruments that follow surface ocean currents – to investigate the pathways of Arctic origin waters that enter the North Atlantic west of Greenland. It shows that these waters remain close to the coast as they flow over the Labrador shelf and only spread into the open ocean south of the Labrador Sea. These results contribute to better understanding how the North Atlantic will be affected by additional freshwater from Greenland and the Arctic in the coming decades.