A paper by Dante and Prof Amit Tandon has just been published in JGR-Ocean titled “Submesoscale phenomena due to the Brazil Current crossing of the Vitória‐Trindade Ridge”. The paper can be found here.
Congratulations Dante and Prof Tandon!
Plain language summary of this paper appears below:
“At 20.5°S, strong currents interact with a submarine chain, the Vitória‐Trindade Ridge. In this study, we use new observations and a 2 km‐resolution regional numerical model to analyze how the interaction between the Brazil Current and the Vitória‐Trindade Ridge seamounts give rise to submesoscale instabilities. We present new high‐resolution velocity and density observations that capture submesoscale features associated with the flow, with patches of unstable flow associated with the Brazil Current interacting with the seamounts. In the same transects of the cruise, our simulation shows that submesoscale activity follows a typical seasonal cycle. But this seasonality is masked in regions where the flow intercepts topography. A Spatio-temporal analysis of the vertical fluxes points to flow‐topography interactions as the main source for these recurrent, deeper instabilities. As the Vitória‐Trindade Ridge emerges as a submesoscale hotspot in the oligotrophic South Atlantic, the lack of observations still remains the main obstacle to better understand the submesoscale processes in the region.”
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