Gulf Stream ring trajectories
Citable URI
https://hdl.handle.net/1912/9601Location
Gulf StreamDOI
10.1575/1912/9601Abstract
During the period 1976-78, the movement of 14 Gulf Stream rings, including two anticyclonic and
12 cyclonic rings, was measured with satellite-tracked free-drifting buoys. The buoys in the cyclonic
rings showed a tendency to move out toward the high-velocity region of the ring and to remain there
circling the center. One buoy stayed in a ring as long as 8 months and completed 86 loops. Periods of
rotation ranged from less than 2 days up to 10 days. The movement of the rings was complicated and
appears to be related to the Gulf Stream and strong topographic features such as the New England
Seamounts . Rings that were not touching the Stream generally moved westward with typical speeds of
5 cm s-1. Rings that were attached to the Stream generally moved downstream in the Stream with
speeds up to 75 cm s-1 . Frequently rings coalesced with the Gulf Stream and one of the following three
things seemed to happen: I) the ring turned into an open meander of the Stream and was lost; 2) the
ring was advected rapidly downstream in the Stream and was presumably lost; and 3) the ring became
attached to the Gulf Stream and then split off again as a modified ring. The results of this study, that
frequently strong interactions occur between rings and the Gulf Stream, are in contrast to my original
view that rings slowly translate southwestward through the Sargasso Sea and gradually decay there.
Description
Also published as: Journal of Physical Oceanography 10 (1980): 90-104