On the boundary flow off Brazil at 5-10°S and its conncetion to the interior tropical Atlantic
Within the context of the German CLIVAR program, an observational program in the western tropical Atlantic with shipboard sections, profiling floats and a moored array aims at studying the role of the shallow thermohaline subtropical cell (STC) in tropical-subtropical interactions and the cold water...
| Published in: | Geophysical Research Letters |
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
AGU (American Geophysical Union)
2002
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://oceanrep.geomar.de/id/eprint/6963/ https://oceanrep.geomar.de/id/eprint/6963/1/GRL02.pdf https://doi.org/10.1029/2002GL014786 |
| Summary: | Within the context of the German CLIVAR program, an observational program in the western tropical Atlantic with shipboard sections, profiling floats and a moored array aims at studying the role of the shallow thermohaline subtropical cell (STC) in tropical-subtropical interactions and the cold water transports underneath. From 6 repeated shipboard profiling sections off Brazil near 5°S a northward warm water transport above 1100 m of 25.0 ± 4.4 Sv is determined, of which 13.4 ± 2.7 Sv occur in the thermocline layer supplying the Equatorial Undercurrent. Trajectories of 15 profiling floats released near the western boundary are presented that drift at shallow levels (200 m and 400 m) and delineate the different STC branches. For the southward flow of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) a section-mean transport of −31.7 ± 9.2 Sv was determined at 5°S. However, different from the steady NADW flow observed earlier along the topography north of the equator, the NADW currents at 5–10°S are much more variable with long periods of northward counterflow along the topography. |
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