Arctic Currents - aboard the r/v Roger Revelle - Dallas Murphy - correspondent

 Going with the flow

Roger Revelle, Some Particulars:

Owner: Office of Naval Research, USN
Operator: Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Built:  9 December 1993, launched 20 April 1995
Propulsion:  Twin 3,000 hp Diesel electric motors
Length:  277 ft (84.4 m)
Beam:  52 ft. (16 m)
Cruising Speed: 12 knots
Range: 15,000 nautical miles (28,000 km)
Endurance: 52 days

Dallas Murphy reports from the sea 

[T]he North Atlantic Current (NAC), a sort of offshoot arm of the Gulf Stream itself.  Twenty to 40 million cubic meters of warm, salty water deliver to the west-facing shores of Europe a moderate climate they don’t deserve, given their latitudes.  For instance, the latitude of Bantry Bay, Ireland, is 51° North, where palm trees can survive, and farther north, much of the coast of Norway above the Arctic Circle remains ice-free year-round.  (On the west side of the Atlantic, that latitude slices across the frigid coast of Labrador.)  So here’s a clear-cut example of how the ocean, in collaboration with the west wind, strongly influences climate over a large swath of the Northern Hemisphere.  And it’s only one example.