eau arctique de fond

CONT: Freezing increases the salinity under the ice; the dense water sinks to the ocean floor and leaves the arctic basins to enter the Greenland and Norwegian Seas, where it mixes with water that sinks under the influence of surface cooling. The resulting water mass has a salinity of 34.95 psu [practical salinity unit] and a temperature of -0.8° to -0.9° C. It fills the Arctic Ocean at all depths below 800 m, the sill depth to the Atlantic. It enters the Atlantic in bursts, when the passage of atmospheric depressions lifts the thermocline and allows Arctic bottom water to flow over the sill.