Vertical distributions of temperature, salinity, and horizontal and vertical current speed were measured along the edges of a number of rapidly freezing leads in the southern central Beaufort Sea during March--April 1992. These observations were restricted to cases having sufficiently small ice water relative speeds that brine-driven convection was expected, based on scaling arguments, to dominate shear turbulence generated by the relative ice water motion. The observed salinity and current features were consistent with an existing conceptual model for sublead convection consequent to brine rejection from ice formation, and with the results of a numerical model which assumes two-dimensionality in the cross-lead direction, and uses a brine input consistent with the field observations. These models predict convection of brine-enriched plumes beneath the lead downward to the pycnocline, where they then spread outward away from the lead. Volume continuity is satisfied by horizontal inflow of water to the lead at the surface. Observed mean downward convection speeds varied from 0.2 to 0.7 cm s-1 and had maxima up to about 2 cm s-1, consistent with the numerical model. Salinities associated with the convecting parcels were about 0.001 practical salinity units (psu) above ambient, which was an order of magnitude less than predicted by the model, while plumes of water flowing away from the lead on the pycnocline had salinities as high as 0.004 psu above ambient. These similarities and discrepancies are discussed within the context of a steady state model versus a nonsteady field situation, and it is concluded that the steady ''convection cell'' concept is probably valid if viewed as a time-averaged sequence of discrete convective plumesor ''thermals.'' ¿ American Geophysical Union 1995