Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
This data report summarzes 45 surface drifter trajectories collected between
November 1998 and June 2000 as part of the North Brazil Current (NBC) Rings Experiment.
NBC rings have been proposed as one of several important mechanisms for the transport of
South Atlantic upper-ocean water across the equatorial-tropical gyre boundary and into the
North Atlantic subtropical gyre. Such transport is required to complete the meridional
overturning cell in the Atlantic forced by the high-latitude production and southward export of
North Atlantic Deep Water. The goal of this program is to obtain, for the first time,
comprehensive observations of the NBC retroflection, the NBC ring formation process, and
the physical structure and properties of NBC rings as they translate northwestward along the
low-latitude western boundary. A total of 45 drifters were deployed. Twenty-four of these
looped anticyclonically within the five rings identified during this experiment. Seven of the
looping ring drifters entered the Caribbean, while the rest moved northward along the eastern
flank of the Lesser Antiles.
Description:
Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. OCE-9729765.
Keywords:
Tropical Atlantic circulation
;
Mesoscale rings
;
Satellite-tracked drifters
;
Ocean currents
;
Seward Johnson (Ship) Cruise NBC 98
;
Seward Johnson (Ship) Cruise NBC 99
;
Seward Johnson (Ship) Cruise NBC 00
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Technical Report
Format:
3353477 bytes
Format:
application/pdf
