(Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 2003-06)
Richardson, Philip L.; Pacheco, M. A.; Wooding, Christine M.
Thirty-two RAFOS floats were launched at the depth of intermediate water, near
750 m, in the Benguela Current along 30S and its extension along 7W. The floats were tracked
acoustically for two years during 1997–1999. Seven floats looped in three Agulhas Current
rings, which drifted west northwestward at a mean velocity of around 5 cm/sec. Floats not in
Agulhas rings tended to drift westward at around 2 cm/sec in the latitude band 22S–35S. North
of 22S three floats drifted eastward. This report describes the float trajectories and summarizes
the main results. These are the first subsurface long-term Lagrangian data in the Benguela
Current.
