In the period June 1991 to August 1993, 107 Argos tracked, drifters dr
ogued to 15 m depth, were released in the Nordic seas (or Greenland, I
celand, and Norwegian Seas). The drifter movements revealed the strong
and spatially confined current systems along the surface salinity fro
nts of the Iceland-Faroe Frontal zone and of the Norwegian coast and a
long the continental margins and their extensions to the Barents Sea a
nd Spitsbergen. The Norwegian Atlantic Current is composed of three di
stinct streams (two continental margin and one coastal branches) which
join into one single swift mean current west of the Lofoten and Veste
ralen Islands, where the strongest measured currents are in excess of
110 cm s(-1). In addition to the general cyclonic gyre circulation in
the Nordic seas, the drifters indicate smaller cyclonic circulation pa
tterns in all the major subbasins, i.e., the Iceland plateau, the Norw
egian, the Lofoten, and the Greenland basins. No surface signature of
the East Icelandic Current is disclosed by the drifters, Interpolated
and low-pass-filtered position data were used to construct maps of 15-
m-depth ensemble mean velocity, velocity variability, and residence ti
me. Vigorous eddy fields are dominant in the strong currents and in th
e Lofoten basin, Eulerian correlations indicate that they tend to prop
agate to the west. In contrast, the Iceland plateau appears quiescent,
both in the mean and eddy velocities. Single-particle diffusivities a
re computed and are found to be in the range 1-7 x 10(7) cm(2) s(-1).
The corresponding Lagrangian timescale and space scale are 1-3 days an
d 10-40 km, respectively. These Lagrangian drifter measurements compos
e the first basin-scale, accurate near-surface velocity data set of th
e Nordic seas.