North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW)
D1. Physical and chemical oceanography and marine meteorologyDefinition
Cold, dense water mass formed in the northern North Atlantic.
North Atlantic Deep Water is the cold, salty, well-oxygenated water mass formed by deep winter convection in the Labrador and Nordic seas. It spreads southward at depths of roughly 1,500 to 4,000 m, much of it in the deep western boundary current, and fills the deep Atlantic above the denser Antarctic Bottom Water. NADW is the lower limb of the AMOC and carries anthropogenic carbon and CFC tracers into the interior.