Circulation and Ecosystems in the Subpolar and Polar North Atlantic - Cruise No. MSM02 - May 23 to September 16, 2006 - Lisbon - Tórshavn - Longyearbyen - Longyearbyen - Reykjavi (English)

The four legs of the second cruise of R/V MARIA S. MERIAN, MSM02, served mainly long-term studies of the variability of physical and biological systems of the northern North Atlantic. Leg 1 was part of the international barter agreement between NERC (Natural Environment Research Council), IFREMER (Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer), BMBF (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung), IMR (Institute for Marine Research, Bergen) and NIOZ (Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research) which is organised by the Ocean Facilities Exchange Group (OFEG). The leg served to continue a French long-term observation of the North-Atlantic circulation and meridional overturning. It repeated a hydrographic section including a comprehensive tracer programme between Portugal and southern Greenland and exchanged moorings. The second leg conducted CTD sections and mooring work addressing the East Greenland Current and the convection state in the Greenland Sea Gyre. During the third leg biosedimentary systems of polar carbonate deposits were investigated with respect to recent climate variability. This work was combined with a study of polar research history on Spitsbergen. The last leg addressed the interannual variability of water mass exchange between North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean through the Fram Strait and of the ecology of the polar deep sea.