Late summer northwestward Amazon plume pathway under the action of the North Brazil Current rings

Abstract

The North Brazil Current (NBC) flows offshore of the mouth of the Amazon River and seasonally sheds anticyclonic rings (NBC rings) that propagate northwestward and interact with the Amazon River plume (ARP). Mesoscale features have a high temporal variability that is hard to monitor from current weekly and monthly sea surface salinity (SSS) satellite fields. Novel SSS fields with a higher temporal resolution analyzed together with satellite geostrophic currents, chlorophyll-a, and wind speed and in-situ data from the “Microbiomes cruise” on the SV Tara in August–September 2021 revealed a late summer freshwater pathway, which was not well documented in earlier studies. By combining these datasets, we improved the characterization of summer ARP pathways. In 2021, the ARP was a succession of freshwater patches cut off from the main plume by the NBC rings. A patch of about 200.000 km2 with salinity <33.5 pss was observed in September 2021, bringing 0.5 Sv of Amazon water northwestward in a period where the mean ocean currents lead to eastward transport. This patch was shallow, very stratified, and it created a surface steric-height anomaly that was identified as an anticyclonic feature in altimetric sea level products. Once separated from the NBC retroflection, it was mainly driven by Ekman currents. Other similar patches were observed during the 2021 summer, leading to a strong intermittency of the ARP transport. They strongly contributed to make 2021 the year with the largest northwestward freshwater transport in late summer within the 2010–2021 time-period investigated. This freshwater transport pathway is important for all plume-related phenomena, and show the ability of combined SMOS and SMAP data to accurately represent the day-to-day SSS variability.