MARIA S. MERIAN MSM21/1b

The cruise MSM 21/1b will take place in the waters around Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland. Here, a sill with a water depth of about 600 m water depth can be found, over which a deep overflow of cold waters into the Atlantic Ocean occurs, as part of the global overturning circulation. On its way downstream of Denmark Strait toward the southern tip of Greenland, the intense and highly variable overflow current entrains large amounts of relatively warm ambient waters. The aims of this expedition are to quantify the variability of the overflow current plume, and to study the mixing processes associated with it. We shall use the autonomous underwater vehicle AUV Abyss equipped with a microstructure turbulence probe in combination with current, stratification and turbulence observations relying both on a close meshed cluster of moorings and lowered measurement techniques.