Arctic current

“ There are, as you perceive on the charts, other currents in the vast ocean, all set in movement for the sake of benefiting the inhabitants of the globe. While the warm Gulf Stream runs up to Spitzbergen, the Hudson’s Bay and Arctic currents bring cold water and icebergs towards the south; and a current from the North Atlantic carries its cooling waters round the arid shores of western Africa. There is the great equatorial current from east to west round the world, and numerous other currents in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the influence of which we shall feel during our voyage ”

“ An arctic current passes southward along the coast of Greenland, carrying with it vast fields of hummocky ice, and enters the North Atlantic through the straits which separate Iceland from the coast of Greenland. To the eastward of this line we have a sea free from ice throughout the year. A warm current—the so-called extension of the Gulf Stream—passes between the coasts of Scotland and Iceland, and carries a large amount of heat to the shores of Norway and Lapland, rendering them relatively mild and habitable. ”

“ The chief currents running out of the Arctic Sea are: (1) The Greenland Polar Current, running southward along the east coast of Greenland, and dividing into two branches north of Iceland— (a) the east Greenland branch, passing south through Denmark Strait and rounding Cape Farewell; (b) the east Iceland branch, running south-eastward between Iceland and Jan Mayen, towards the Faeroes. It seems as if only a small portion of this current actually passes the Faero-Iceland ridge and reaches the Atlantic Ocean. ”

“ The innermost warm band is the one which exhibits the highest temperature and greatest rate of flow, its velocity being greatest where it is pressed on laterally by the Arctic Current, so that a rate of 4 miles per hour is occasionally observed. Capt. Nares estimates the depth of the Stream in this part of its course at about 100 fathoms, and its rate of flow in the line of most rapid movement at 3 miles per hour. The outermost band, on the other hand, graduates insensibly, both as to temperature and rate of movement, into the general sur face-water of the Atlantic. ”

“ If the ice islands in the Atlantic, like lumps of ice in a pitcher of water, chill our climate in spring, they are at the same time agents in preventing a still more serious secular chilling which might result from the growth without limit of the Arctic snow and ice. They are also constantly employed in wearing down the Arctic land, and aided by the great northern current from Davis's Straits, in scattering stones, boulders and sand over the banks along the American coast. ”

“ The atmosphere surrounding the earth is just like the water in the large reservoirs—there are deep places and shallow places, holes you can drop in, and currents like the Gulf Stream current, the Japanese current, which warms the northern states and British Columbia, and the Arctic Humboldt current, which sends a cold stream down the Pacific coast of South America. If we have no difficulties with these rivers of the air, and the wind does not come up too strong, we can make Asuncion by six o'clock in the morning. ”

“ This under Polar current water, then, as it rises to the top, and is brought to the surface by the agitation of the sea in the Arctic regions, gives out its surplus heat and warms the atmosphere there till the temperature of this warm under current water is lowered to the requisite degree for going out on the surface. ”

“ Contrary to the rule in the Equatorial seas, we find in the Polar-ocean an increase of temperature from the surface downwards, in consequence of the warmer under-currents, flowing from the south northwards, and passing beneath the cold waters of the superficial Arctic current. ”

“ This warm water can hardly come from the Arctic Sea itself, while the current issuing thence towards the south has a general temperature of about -1.5° C. It can hardly be anything other than the Gulf Stream that finds its way hither, and replaces the water which in its upper layers flows towards the north, forming the sources of the East Greenland polar current. ”

“ He also supposes that if at the same time a considerable part of northern and central Europe were submerged, so that a cold current from the arctic seas should sweep over it, an additional refrigeration of three or four degrees would be produced. He has speculated in the same essay on the effects which would be experienced in the eastern hemisphere if the same mighty current of warm water, instead of crossing the Atlantic, were made to run northwards from the Gulf of Mexico through the region now occupied by the valley of the Mississippi, and so onwards to the arctic regions. ”

“ Moreover, the North Pacific, like the North Atlantic, is enveloped, where these warm waters go, with mists and fogs, and streaked with lightning. The Aleutian Islands are almost as renowned for fogs and mists as are the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. A surface current flows north from Behring's Strait into the Arctic Sea: but in the Atlantic the current is from, not into the Arctic Sea: it flows south on the surface, north below; Behring's Strait being too shallow to admit of mighty under currents, or to permit the introduction from the polar basin of any large icebergs into the Pacific. ”

“ Pieces a yard square slowly rise up on end before the pressure and, falling back, shiver into fragments which scurry across the smooth surface of the sheet until they are arrested and become frozen to the main surface. Everywhere when the forward movement is on there is noise of creaking, groaning, and cracking, and everywhere on the ice sheet there is evidence of the force exerted.
The Arctic Ocean may be likened to such a pond, only two thousand miles across and with ice upon its surface which never melts and is always being forced one way or the other by tide, wind, or current. ”

“ What does materially affect climate, however, is the variation in the annual range, Equator-wards, of the great Arctic currents, which convey on their surface not only the bergs, but the vast compact fields of pack-ice, extending over areas of many thousands of square miles, and thus bringing about a reduction of temperature, infinitely in excess of that produced by the bergs. ”

“ The strong current running to the northward from the river would naturally sweep the ice out of the bay and to the northward, as far as the vicinity of Banksland and the extreme northern Arctic.
Where it goes to and where it ceases is now a matter of conjecture. It is to be hoped that the drift-floats which were launched by us from this point, and from various points between here and Herald island, may contribute something to the solution of this question. ”

“ This movement of the ice varies with each accumulation of floes, as its rate of motion depends on the height of the ice-field, which then acts as a sail. It is ascertained by experience that calms, on the other hand, have the remarkable property of breaking up the ice. The knowledge and application of these circumstances are essential to the Arctic navigator. If the course of a ship lies across or against a current, it is constantly deflected. ”

“ By the action of the south-westerly current, a vast quantity of ice is annually brought from the north and east, and conducted along the east shore of Old Greenland as far as Cape Farewell, where such masses as still remain undissolved are soon destroyed by the influence of the solar heat and the force of the sea, to which they then become exposed from almost every quarter. ”

“ Just as there are evidently inflows of warm water and outflows of colder water in Antarctic seas, so are there similar phenomena in Arctic seas. Reference has already been made to the Gulf Stream. One of the most marked of the cold currents is the East Greenland current, which has been known for a long time. Scoresby in 1823 pointed out that this main current along the eastern coast of Greenland "sets to the south-westward." ”

“ From causes similar (though of less efficacy, in consequence of the smaller area occupied by water) to those which originally gave birth to the ascending energy of the Antarctic waters, a gelid current is also generated in the Arctic Ocean, which, descending in a south-westerly direction, encounters the already faltering Gulf Stream in the space between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla. A contest for the mastery ensues, which is eventually terminated by a compromise. ”

“ Baffin’s Bay, Behring’s Straits, along the coast of Greenland, and from Spitzbergen, mainly because on them all we are met by the great Arctic currents, which act as channels to carry off the ice of the Polar basin. These currents carry with them vast masses of ice, which they deposit on all the coasts which they strike. ”

“ If we suppose that not the wind but Arctic currents carried the ice-field southwards, we must yet admit the probability—nay, almost the certainty—that such currents are only local, and occupy but a part of the breadth of the North Atlantic seas in those high latitudes. The general drift of the North Atlantic surface-water is unquestionably not towards the south but towards the north ”

“ At the present time the warm water thrown into the North Atlantic, co-operating with the prevalent westerly winds, not only increases the temperature of its whole waters, but gives an exceptionally mild climate to western Europe. Still the countervailing influence of the Arctic currents and the Greenland ice, is sufficient to permit numerous icebergs to remain unmelted on the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland throughout the summer. ”

“ This has been further complicated by the constant tendency of the Arctic and Antarctic currents, aided by ice, to drift solid materials, set free by the vast denuding action of frost, from the polar to the temperate regions, and by the further tendency of animal life to heap up calcareous accumulations under the warm waters of the tropical regions. ”

“ The presence within the arctic circle of a considerable body of comparatively warm water, which observation has detected going into it as an under current—which induction shows must rise up and flow out as a surface current—would give forth vapour most freely. This vapour, being lighter than air, displaces a certain quantity of atmosphere. Rising up and being condensed, it liberates its latent heat in the cloud region, and so, by raising temperature, causes the moderate degree of rarefaction which the barometer at sea, at Greenwich, at St. ”

“ Moreover, two important elements in the problem of oceanic circulation are disregarded by Dr. Croll: 1. The water borne from equatorial to polar regions by aerial currents, in the form of aqueous vapor, must exercise a powerful influence not only on the earth's temperature but also upon marine currents; for, as shown by Lieutenant Maury, it is sufficient to permanently render the Arctic seas much less saline than those of tropical regions. ”

“ Those propitious ice-years amount therefore to nothing more than a greater recession of the outer ice-barrier—trifling when compared with the mighty whole—or to an increased navigability of certain coast-waters, or to a local loosening of the inner Polar ice-net. In reality the whole Arctic Sea, with its countless ice-fields and floes, and its web of fine interlacing water-ways, is nothing but a net constantly in motion from local, terrestrial, or cosmical causes. All the changes and phenomena of this mighty network lead us to infer the existence of frozen seas up to the Pole itself ”

“ But mobile currents of water have no such power of accumulating and storing up heat or cold from one year to another, though they do in a pre-eminent degree possess the power of equalising the temperature of winter and summer and of conveying the superabundant heat of the tropics to ameliorate the rigour of the Arctic winters. ”

“ It is very difficult to analyse properly Arctic observations, owing, as before stated, to the more complex distribution of land and water in that region. But there is no doubt that one of the difficulties is the desultory fashion in which meteorological investigation has been carried out in the North Polar Regions, the international co-operation of 1881 and 1882 being the only instance where a systematic attempt was made to study the meteorology of the Arctic Regions as a whole, and even these stations were not in existence for a long enough period. ”

“ This was one of the places in which the barrier is within the floe ice several miles.
"The temperature being so low in the summer months, there is but little chance of the ice melting or disappearing, as from accounts frequently takes place in the Arctic Ocean. Your time being unlimited will allow you to wait some days in a situation to make experiments.
"I conceive that the ice of the permanent barrier changes very little from year to year: along the line of our exploration it looks too solid and fast to be moved by any thing short of a continued temperature. ”

“ The hypothesis of an open sea in the Arctic Ocean becomes necessary to supply a source for this vapour; for the winds, entering the Arctic Ocean as they do after passing over land and mountain heights of America, Europe, and Asia, must be robbed of much of their moisture ere they reach that ocean; it will require an abundant supply of vapour to create there by precipitation and the liberation of latent heat a degree of rarefaction sufficient to cause a general movement of the air polarward for the distance of 40° of latitude all round. ”