Shelf Slope Cascade

A shelf-slope cascade is the gravity-driven flow of dense water that forms on a continental shelf and then plunges down the continental slope to find its density level. The water densifies through winter cooling, evaporation, or brine rejection during sea-ice formation, becomes denser than the offshore water at the same depth, and cascades through canyons and across the shelf break. Cascades ventilate intermediate and deep water, flush shelf sediment and organic carbon to the slope, and occur in the Gulf of Lions, the Adriatic, and around Antarctica. They are part of the dense-water-formation pathway that feeds deep ocean circulation.