Regardless of the above critical findings, what we can offer as a practical outcome of our analyses is a set of approximate statistical relationships and procedures (see (1), (2), (3), (4), (5) and (6a)). These relationships can be used in practice but only to make rough estimates of certain seawater constituent concentrations based on relatively easily measurable values of seawater IOPs. At the same Metabolism inhibitor time it has to be borne in mind that the application of such simplified relationships will inevitably

entail statistical errors of estimation of the order of 50% or more. We thank Sławomir Sagan for his assistance with the ac-9 instrument measurements and Dorota Burska for the analysis of samples for particulate organic carbon performed at the Institute of Oceanography (University of Gdańsk). “
“The sea water in the coastal and open zones of the Nordic Seas (the Greenland, Iceland and Norwegian Venetoclax solubility dmso Seas) has a complex biophysical structure caused by the mixing of different water masses and a huge area with water fronts and glacial activity. The oceanic fronts are multiscale in both space and time and are associated with various phenomena and

processes, such as high biological productivity and abundant fishing, abrupt changes of sea colour and powerful vertical movements. Large-scale fronts have important effects on both the weather and the climate (Kostianoy & Nihoul 2009). The main source of the currents circulating in the Nordic Sea is the warm, saline Atlantic Water (AW) that is carried northwards. The eastern branch flows around the Norwegian shelf, the Barents Sea slope and the west Spitsbergen shelf break, forming the eastern branch (the core) of the West Spitsbergen Current (WSC). The western branch of WSC, less saline and cooler than the core, is the continuation of the offshore westerly stream formed and guided by the topography (Piechura & Walczowski 1995, Walczowski & Piechura 2007). These water masses meet again west of

Spitsbergen, converging as a result of the bottom topography at latitude 78°N and then diverging again in the Fram Strait. Moreover, the Svalbard Archipelago is surrounded by a cold (< 0°C) Arctic water mass penetrating many from the Barents Sea shelf off the eastern coasts of the Svalbard Archipelago (Svendsen et al. 2002, Kostianoy & Nihoul 2009). The organic matter contained in the surface layer of the euphotic zone is a consequence of the history of the routes taken by the water masses, flowing both far from land and along the shelves and shorelines, as well as of the conditions in local biological systems (Drozdowska 2007). Finding such features of organic matter that are typical of the individual study areas, that is, typical of different water masses, is the purpose of this research.