Abstract. The Faroe Bank Channel is the deepest passage across the Greenland-Scotland Ridge (GSR), and through it, there is a continuous deep flow of cold and dense water passing from the Arctic Mediterranean into the North Atlantic and further to the rest of the World oceans. This FBC-overflow is part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which has recently been suggested to have weakened. From November 1995 to May 2015, the FBC-overflow has been monitored by a continuous ADCP (Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler) mooring, which has been deployed in the middle of this narrow channel. Combined with regular hydrography cruises and several short-term mooring experiments, this allows us to construct time series of volume transport and to follow changes in the hydrographic properties and density of the FBC-overflow. The mean kinematic overflow, derived from the velocity field solely, was found to be (2.2 ± 0.2) Sv (1 Sv = 106 m3 s−1) with a slight, but not statistically significant, positive trend. The coldest part, and probably the bulk, of the FBC-overflow warmed by a bit more than 0.1 °C, especially after 2002. This warming was, however, accompanied by increasing salinities, which seem to have compensated for the temperature-induced density decrease. Thus, the FBC-overflow has remained stable in volume transport as well as density during the two decades from 1995 to 2015. This is consistent with reported observations from the other main overflow branch, the Denmark Strait overflow, and the three Atlantic inflow branches to the Arctic Mediterranean that feed the overflows. If the AMOC has weakened during the last two decades, it is not likely to have been due to its northernmost extension – the exchanges across the Greenland-Scotland Ridge.
The Flow through the Gulf of Mexico
