North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW)

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The southward-flowing deep limb of the Atlantic overturning, assembled from three sources: water that convects in the Labrador Sea in winter, and two dense overflows that spill across the Greenland–Scotland Ridge from the Nordic seas. The Denmark Strait overflow crosses a sill about 620 m deep and carries a revised mean of 3.20 ± 0.50 Sv; the Faroe Bank Channel overflow contributes roughly 2.1 ± 0.2 Sv. Both plunge down the continental slope, entrain several times their own volume of ambient water, and continue south along the western boundary of the Atlantic as a deep current. Most of the dense water that feeds the Faroe Bank Channel originates in the Greenland Sea and the Arctic Ocean rather than in the channel itself.