Horizontal advection of the Amazon Freshwater Plume at the surface of the North Western Tropical Atlantic as detected in 2010 by SMOS and Altimetry
By Nicolas Reul and Joe TenerelliSee more on Ifremer website
Legend: animation showing the daily SSS in the North western Tropical Atlantic computed by averaging SMOS retrievals over a +/- 5-days running window. Superimposed are the AVISO surface currents (black arrows) derived from merged altimeter data.The solid thick gray contours represent the vorticity for anticyclonic eddies (clockwise rotation or negative vorticity) and the dashed one represent the vorticity for cyclonic eddies.
As illustrated, a very good visual consistency is found between the altimetric surface current patterns and the SMOS SSS spatio-temporal distribution along the year.At the begining of june, the freshwater input at the mouth of the Amazon river is seen to be transported more than 2000 km north westward at the ocean surface and seems to travel as a passive tracer meandering in between a succession of antycylonic/cyclonic eddy pairs, acting as a gear cluster for this large scale oceanic freshwater pump.
Legend: schematic view of the northwestward transport of freshwater from the Amazone river mouth to the subtropical gyre advected in surface current convergence zones through a succession of pairs of cyclonic (C) and anti-cyclonic (A) eddies.
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Bonjour\n\nJe ne comprends pas très bien votre questionou ce que vou ssouhaitez communiquer…\nCould you please elaborate?\n\nCheers\nYann