Talk:North Atlantic Deep Water
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[edit] intro
I'm a researcher that studies NADW, and I checked this article to see what students would find if they searched it. While the formation section is fine, the introductary paragraph needed substantial revisions. I improved it, but hopefully someone with some free time will fix it up properly, with attributions and such.
[edit] current?
Is it really correct to describe NADW as a current, rather than a water mass of a certain density from a certain source (in this case upwelled water that cools in the northern latitudes and sinks). It doesn't so much flow, like a current, as spread out, thus forming an effective barrier to genuine currents like the Gulf Stream...
As far as I've been able to gather, it's a current just like the Gulf stream, only that it's going the other way and a couple of kilometers below the surface. There's an image of what I'm trying to describe at http://www.snf.se/snf/hallbart/1999/hallbart599/golfstrom.htm (but the text is in Swedish). The NADW is the dark current, the Gulf stream and the North Atlantic drift the light one. --Pinkunicorn
I've checked various Oceanography texts, and none refer to it as a current: not even our own Atlantic Ocean page...
NADW is a water mass, not a current. The boundary current, which formed by NADW spreading near contintal shelf is called "Deep western boundary current (DWBC)" -- Thomas
