Abstract
The Southern Ocean front (SOF) is an important factor that affects the heat exchange and material transport of the Southern Ocean. In the past two decades, with the advancements in satellite remote-sensing technology, the study of the spatio-temporal variability of the Southern Ocean front has become a new hot topic. Nevertheless, the southwestern Atlantic, as an important part of the Southern Ocean, is poorly studied in this regard. Based on the 16-year (2004–2019) high-resolution satellite observations of sea surface temperature (SST) and 13-year (2007–2019) observations of chlorophyll (CHL), this study detected and analyzed the position and seasonal variation of the SOF in the southwestern Atlantic using a gradient-based frontal detection method. According to the experimental results, the thermal front (derived from the SST data) disappeared in winter due to the spatially uniform surface cooling, whereas the ocean color front (derived from the CHL data) existed without remarkable spatio-temporal changes. Furthermore, the exact position and seasonal variation of the SOF in the southwestern Atlantic are determined by comparing the paths of the two fronts. Since the formation of the Kuroshio front in the East China Sea (ECS) is similar to the SOF in the southwestern Atlantic, the seasonal distributions of the two fronts were compared. Apart from that, the Kuroshio thermal fronts were mostly distributed in winter and less in summer, while the Southern Ocean thermal fronts showed the opposite. These results indicated that the ocean current properties significantly influence the spatio-temporal variability of the front.
Highlights
The southwestern Atlantic, located to the southeast of South America, includes a continental shelf to the northwest and a broad Argentine Basin to the southeast
The southwestern Atlantic mainly contains the South American continental shelf water and the Falkland Current, which are bounded by the 200 m isobath
Since the South American continental shelf waters are influenced by the Brazil Warm Current, the shelf water is warmer than the Falkland Current water
Summary
The southwestern Atlantic, located to the southeast of South America, includes a continental shelf to the northwest and a broad Argentine Basin to the southeast. As a part of the Southern Ocean, it is connected to the Pacific and Antarctic through the Drake Passage (Figure 1). Between the subtropical waters and the Antarctic Peninsula, the southwestern. Atlantic is characterized by a sequence of currents and associated hydrographical features, including frontal systems. The most pronounced currents are the Brazil Current [1], the Malvinas [2,3] or Falkland Current [4], the South Atlantic Current in the Subtropical Convergence [5], and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) [6,7,8]. The Southern Ocean is characterized by the intense eastward-flowing ACC. Connecting the three oceans in the world, the ACC significantly influences the environment of Antarctica, the transport of materials in the Southern Ocean, and climate change [9,10]
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