Extreme wind events responsible for an outsized role in shelf-basin exchange around the southern tip of Greenland

Abstract

The coastal circulation around Southern Greenland transports fresh, buoyant water masses from the Arctic and Greenland Ice Sheet near regions of convection, sinking, and deep-water formation in the Irminger and Labrador Seas. Here, we track the pathways and fate of these fresh water masses by initializing synthetic particles in the East Greenland Coastal Current on the Southeast Greenland shelf and running them through altimetry-derived surface currents from 1993 to 2021. We report that the majority of waters (83%) remain on the shelf around the southern tip of Greenland. Variability in the shelf-basin exchange of the remaining particles closely follows the number of tip jet wind events on seasonal and interannual timescales. The probability of a particle exiting the shelf increases almost fivefold during a tip jet event. These results indicate that the number of tip jets is a close proxy of the shelf-basin exchange around Southern Greenland.