Hydrographical Investigations in the Greenland and Norwegian Seas 
within the “Deep Water Project’ of 
The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea 
Summary ; 
(ICES) 
In many aspects the Arctic Ocean, Greenland, Iceland and Norwe- 
gian Seas, and the peripheral shelf .seas, must be considered 
together as the Arctic Mediterranean Seas (AAGAARD et al.,1985), 
since interacting processes tie these regions together in a unique 
thermohaline system. While Deep and Bottom Waters primarily form and 
circulate internally, various intermediate waters ventilate the deep 
North Atlantic Ocean and subsequently the World Ocean. 
The Greenland Sea is one of few areas in the Northern hemisphere, 
where waters that have been in contact with the atmosphere in 
winter, sink to great depth, carrying their surface imprint along. 
From there they ultimately feel the abyssal waters of the World 
Ocean. A profound knowledge of these processes is required to assess 
the impact and rates of i.e. atmospheric pollutants that finally end 
up in the deep World Ocean. . 
To investigate the conditions, the formation and the spreading of 
Deep Water in the Greenland Sea, The International Council for the 
Exploration of the Sea (ICES), Copenhagen, co-ordinated existing or 
planned efforts and initiated others within the frame-work of the 
"Deep Water Project”, 
In May to July 1982, the German RV ‘Meteor’ worked the Greenland 
and Norwegian Seas on long hydro-chemical sections with full-depth 
casts to describe the large-scale abyssal circulation in a potential 
spreading phase. It followed‘ the Canadian RV Hudson”, ceruise 
32-001, in February to April 1982, which was to lock into the 
formation phase of deep water. Both cruises where closely co-ordi- 
aated and the data are supplementary to each other in many aspects. 
As salinity is of particular importance at low temperatures for 
determining density, great care was taken to cbtain a high-quality 
consistent set of bottle-data, including nutrients. and, at scme 
stations, an array of tracers. These data have been checked against 
data sets of known high quality. 
This report gives all station details and the data from the 
small- and the large-volume water samples in listed form. Secme 
vertical sections and horizontal maps summarize the general hydro- 
graphical situation and important details. Data from a current-meter 
array in the Jan Mayen Fracture Zone are summarized in graphical 
Form. 
The data provide detailed evidence on the dee circulation in the 
Greenland basin, the existence of deep boundary currents on both the 
Eastern and the Western sides of. the basins and the inter-basin