North Brazil current rings viewed by TRMM Microwave Imager SST and the influence of the Amazon Plume.pdfVIP

ARTICLE IN PRESS Deep-Sea Research I 52 (2005) 137–160 /locate/dsr North Brazil current rings viewed by TRMM Microwave Imager SST and the in?uence of the Amazon Plume Amy F?eld? Earth and Space Research, 290 Clausland Mountain Road, Upper Grandview, NY 10960-4113, USA Received 20 June 2003; received in revised form 14 May 2004; accepted 20 May 2004 Available online 5 November 2004 Abstract In the western equatorial Atlantic, 5 years of satellite Sea Surface Temperature (SST) measurements (1998–2002) from the cloud penetrating Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager reveal SST signatures of rings shedding from the North Brazil Current (NBC) as it separates from the South American coastline north of the Amazon River Delta and retro?ects eastward between 5 and 101N. By removing the spatial-mean SST from a 71 by 71 square of the nearly instantaneous measurements of each satellite pass, the 46.7 day aliasing period of the diurnal solar cycle is reduced, and seven to eight rings are observed per year with relatively warm (cold) SST anomalies of up to 1 1C in the ?rst (second) half of the year. The sense of the SST anomalies carried by the NBC rings are determined by the contrast between the NBC SST and the regional SSTs that are in?uenced by the far-reaching seasonally varying Amazon River freshwater plume. Within a 1.6-year period, 12 of the SST anomalies are validated by in situ mooring array data con?rming the predicted sense of the SST anomalies for each season. According to historical hydrographic data, during the ?rst half of the year, the Amazon Plume is generally contained northwest along the coast, whereas during the second half of the year, the Amazon Plume surrounds the NBC retro?ection on the west and the north, and from the surface down to 50 m, imposing a dramatic surface salinity contrast up to à4 and a surface temperature contrast up to +2 1C across the front. The surface layer characteristics of the rings shed from the NBC retro?ection