of the author and of Dickson and Brown (1994) in
which the overflow transports in both the Iceland
and Irminger basins were quantified. The advances
reported here are modest but I have sought to
extract new information from the older measurements, information which should prove of value to
modellers. Initially the overflows were observed to
be surprisingly steady but more recent observations have suggested variability on time scales of
months to millennia. There is ongoing effort into
investigating detailed processes within the overflow plume that will undoubtedly benefit future
modelling, because parameterizing the mixing has
been shown to be critically important. While current state-of-art ocean general circulation models
represent the overflows poorly, the prospects are
encouraging. Unfortunately the same cannot yet be
said for the ocean component of coupled models,
which are needed for credible climate modelling
and prediction.
5.6 The Dense Northern Overflows
417
Saunders