Atmospheric boundary layer adjustment to the synoptic cycle at the Brazil‐Malvinas Confluence, South Atlantic Ocean

Abstract

This study analyzes and discusses atmospheric boundary layer vertical profiles of potential temperature, specific humidity, and wind speed at each of the sides of the Brazil‐Malvinas Confluence in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean. Such confluence is characterized by the meeting of water masses with very different characteristics: the southern waters of the Malvinas current can be several degrees colder and appreciably less salty than the northern Brazil current waters. At the same time, a synoptic cycle can be identified at the region, marked by the successive passages of frontal systems and extratropical cyclones. The different phases of the synoptic cycle lead to different thermal advections at the confluence, causing respective different patterns of atmospheric boundary layer adjustment to the surface heterogeneity induced by the confluence. In the present study, this adjustment along the synoptic cycle is analyzed using data from five experiments performed across the confluence from 2003 to 2008. In each of the campaigns a number of soundings were launched from a ship at both sides of the confluence. A climatological analysis with respect to the closest frontal passage is presented, and it suggests that the observations collected at each of the years analyzed are referent to a different day of the synoptic cycle. The average profiles at each side of the confluence are in agreement with previous modeling studies of warm and cold thermal advection patterns over an oceanic front. Furthermore, our study shows that peculiar transitional characteristics are also observed between the conditions of well‐established warm and cold advection. At many phases of the synoptic cycle a strongly stratified boundary layer occurs at one or both sides of the confluence. Some of the observed characteristics, such as a large moisture accumulation near the surface, suggest that existing sensible and latent heat fluxes parameterizations fail under very strong stratifications, and the consequences of this deficiency are analyzed.