East Greenland Current

The lowness in salinity has a lot to do with freshwater run off from sea ice melting, river runoff, and Pacific water flux and it is cold due to air-sea interactions while in the Arctic.

[4] The deep water masses (>1600 m) are recirculated within the Greenland Sea due to the Jan Mayen fracture zone.

Here, the deep water encounters the Jan Mayen Ridge and are deflected eastward towards the interior of the Greenland Sea Gyre.

That is quite a large variation that they attributed to the widely varying strength of the Atlantic Water flow at intermediate depths.

[3][6] One of the most important aspects of the East Greenland Current is the amount of sea ice it exports into the North Atlantic Ocean.

[2] The volume of ice exported on an annual scale is a strong function of multiple atmospheric variables (wind, temperature, etc.)

During high NAO/AO indexes the cyclonic wind field over the Arctic becomes very strong, this transports more ice out through Fram Strait and into the EGC.

During low NAO/AO indexes the cyclonic wind field is quite small and thus the transport out of the Fram Strait diminishes greatly.

Jones et al.[9] note that there are three different freshwater sources for the EGC: Pacific water, river runoff, and sea-ice meltwater.

They find that the biggest contributor to the freshening of the EGC is due to river runoff, followed by Pacific water, and a distant last is sea-ice meltwater (nearly negligible).

Solid sea ice is very mobile, and winds can easily direct its flow along with ocean currents.