Iceland review - 2013, Page 52

50 ICELAND REVIEW
The heaTing elemenT
Without the Gulf Stream, Iceland would live up to its name.
By Páll StEfánSSon
TRANSLATED By Eygló Svala arnarSdóttir
When the Gulf Stream embarks
on its voyage in the Straits of
Florida to the north and west
its temperature is 30°C (85°F). It has a width
of about 100 kilometers (60 miles), depth of
1,000 meters (3,300 feet) and speed of nine
kilometers (5.6 miles) per hour. The volume
of the Gulf Stream is extreme: 150 million
cubic meters per second. That is 140 times more
voluminous than all the rivers that flow into the
Atlantic Ocean from both sides. The energy, the
heat, that the Gulf Stream transports northwards is
1.4 petawatts (1015 W), or 100 times the world’s cur-
rent energy demand.
Thanks to the Gulf Stream, Iceland and Norway
are inhabitable. The climate in those countries is much
milder than in other locations at the same latitude. On
its course, it takes a 40 degree turn to the north just
south of Newfoundland and continues to the west where
it splits in two. One of the currents streams northwards to
the British Isles, Iceland and past northern Norway, and the
other southwards past the western coast of North Africa.
The Gulf Stream encircles Iceland, causing the ocean
temperature around the island to be high for its latitude
of 64-66°north. It also keeps sea ice
at bay, which is carried with the cold
East Greenland Current from the North
Pole and far into the Atlantic Ocean, just
off the western coast of Iceland. Labrador,
Canada, which is at the same latitude as
Iceland, does not enjoy the Gulf Stream’s
heat and is near uninhabitable due to sea ice
and a much colder climate.
Grímsey, Iceland’s northernmost inhabited
island, which lies on the Arctic Circle, has an
average air temperature of 3°C (37°F), while the
ocean temperature is 5°C (41°F)—two degrees
warmer than the air temperature, as a consequence
of the Gulf Stream. Around Grímsey, the ocean tem-
perature is lowest in March, 1°C (34°F), and warmest
in August, 9°C (48°F). Off South Iceland, the ocean is
warmer: 4.5°C (40°F) at its lowest in January and 11°C
(52°F) at its peak in August.
The distance from Key West, where the Gulf Stream
has its origins, to the tip of Reykjanes peninsula in
Southwest Iceland, is 6,111 kilometers (3,797 miles). It
takes the Gulf Stream around 679 hours, or just short of one
month, 28 days, to reach Iceland. 
the lagoon Holtsós in South iceland, unfrozen in early december.