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    Hydrography of the Gulf of Mexico using autonomous floats

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    jpo-d-17-0205.1.pdf (4.072Mb)
    Date
    2018-04-04
    Author
    Hamilton, Peter  Concept link
    Leben, Robert  Concept link
    Bower, Amy S.  Concept link
    Furey, Heather H.  Concept link
    Perez-Brunius, Paula  Concept link
    Metadata
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    Citable URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/1912/10466
    As published
    https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-17-0205.1
    DOI
    10.1175/JPO-D-17-0205.1
    Keyword
     Eddies; Mixing; Potential vorticity; Surface layer; Water masses 
    Abstract
    Fourteen autonomous profiling floats, equipped with CTDs, were deployed in the deep eastern and western basins of the Gulf of Mexico over a four-year interval (July 2011–August 2015), producing a total of 706 casts. This is the first time since the early 1970s that there has been a comprehensive survey of water masses in the deep basins of the Gulf, with better vertical resolution than available from older ship-based surveys. Seven floats had 14-day cycles with parking depths of 1500 m, and the other half from the U.S. Argo program had varying cycle times. Maps of characteristic water masses, including Subtropical Underwater, Antarctic Intermediate Water (AAIW), and North Atlantic Deep Water, showed gradients from east to west, consistent with their sources being within the Loop Current (LC) and the Yucatan Channel waters. Altimeter SSH was used to characterize profiles being in LC or LC eddy water or in cold eddies. The two-layer nature of the deep Gulf shows isotherms being deeper in the warm anticyclonic LC and LC eddies and shallower in the cold cyclones. Mixed layer depths have an average seasonal signal that shows maximum depths (~60 m) in January and a minimum in June–July (~20 m). Basin-mean steric heights from 0–50-m dynamic heights and altimeter SSH show a seasonal range of ~12 cm, with significant interannual variability. The translation of LC eddies across the western basin produces a region of low homogeneous potential vorticity centered over the deepest part of the western basin.
    Description
    Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 48 (2018): 773-794, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0205.1.
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    • Physical Oceanography (PO)
    Suggested Citation
    Journal of Physical Oceanography 48 (2018): 773-794
     
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