Climatic Conditions Around

Air temperature anomalies and sea ice cover during 1993 around Greenland indicated that the early-1990s experienced similar anomalous cold environmental conditions to those experienced during the beginning of the 1970s and 1980s. Similar to the last decade, and the year 1992, cold air masses contributed to the extreme conditions off West Greenland during the first quarter of 1993. March conditions revealed a cold air mass centred around the town of Egedesminde. Temperature anomalies were less than –8K, influencing the entire Davis Strait/Labrador Sea region. Only around Iceland, positive air temperature anomalies were encountered. The warmest month in the Northwest Atlantic region during 1993 was October. In contrast to the west coast, the east coast of Greenland showed different cli-matic conditions during 1993. Under the regime of the anomalous cold air temperatures, the surface layer of the ocean was cooled, and sea ice formed to a larger extent than nor-mal. The ice did not leave Cape Farewell before mid-August, and it returned in December. During October ice returned to the areas off East Greenland. Analysis of year-mean air tem-perature time series from Nuuk/West Greenland revealed that the cooling process, as ob-served since the late-1960s, was still persistent. Subsurface autumn temperature observa-tions indicated slightly above normal temperatures (+0.4K) for the 0–200 m layer compared with the 1963–93 mean. In the 0–50 m surface layer temperature, anomalies were about +1K. This may have resulted from the warm air temperature conditions during September and October in the West Greenland area. Warming was greatest in the 0–50 m layer off Cape Desolation where the anomaly was about 2K above the autumn 1983–93 mean. Off East Greenland, at Angmagssalik, thermal conditions were below normal during most of the first half of 1993, and above normal from September onwards. This was reflected in warm-ing of the subsurface layer 0–200 m, which amounted to +0.9K, for the Gauss Bank Section and +0.26K for the Discord Section of the 1981–93 mean