Das Projekt "Thermohaliner Kreislauf in der Groenlandsee (ESOP II - Europaeisches Projekt Subpolare Ozeane)" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Stiftung Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung e.V. (AWI) durchgeführt. General Information: The goal of ESOP-2 is to understand the thermohaline circulation in the Greenland Sea, its sensitivity, and impact on global ocean circulation, building on a unique combination of novel experimental techniques, modelling and experience gained under ESOP-I. ESOP-2 combines 21 partners from 8 European countries. Specific objectives: - To understand the oceanic thermohaline circulation on meso and large scales and its dependence on surface fluxes of heat, fresh water and momentum. - To follow the fate of the newly formed waters as they leave into the Norwegian Sea, the Iceland Sea, and over the Denmark Strait, thus contributing to the global ocean circulation. - To obtain a quantitative estimate of both the depth and the integrated extent of the deep winter-time mixing. - To quantify rates of mixing in summer at shallow (approx. 300 m) levels in the Greenland Sea gyre. - To study the importance of internal mixing processes for the transformation of water masses. - To assess the lateral exchanges between the rim and the central gyre of the Greenland Sea. - To study fresh water fluxes into and out of the central Greenland Sea region. - To study ice growth and decay and consequent salt fluxes and overturning within the central Greenland Sea region. - Evaluate the role of convection areas in ocean-atmosphere gas exchange. - Investigate the role of thermohaline circulation in CO2 transport. - To provide precise calculations of carbon fluxes and carbon budgets in active convection areas like the Greenland Sea, and evaluate the efficiency of the convection areas in the oceanic uptake CO2. - To provide better constraints on the global carbon budgets. - To use observations to improve and calibrate coupled atmosphere-ocean models One of the main issues in marine research today is to understand whether the thermohaline circulation is stable in its present mode of operation. Despite many years of extensive research, only a crude and qualitative understanding is at hand today, and many fundamental questions related to the basic nature of convective overturning in high latitudes are not resolved: what are the mechanisms, what are the driving forces, what are the quantities and ventilation rates, and what are the quantities of the associated fluxes of carbon? This calls for a novel approach to the study of thermohaline circulation, and it is the ambition of ESOP-2 to overcome the shortcomings of previous attempts by the implementation of a completely new interdisciplinary research strategy: ESOP-2 combines the purposeful release of an anthropogenic tracer, the launching of isobaric floats, the observation of standard hydrographic parameters and trancient tracers, partly from a permanently moored, internally recording CTD, a complete coverage of the carbon cycle, ... Prime Contractor: Universitetet I Bergen, Centre for Environment and Resource Studies; Bergen; Norway.