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The Effects of Weather Systems, Currents, and Coastal Processes on Major Oil Spills At Sea
Published in Gunnar Kullenberg, Pollutant Transfer and Transport in the Sea, 2018
The role of large-scale wind and current fields has again come into focus with the largest oil spill in history, which began June 3, 1979, when the Ixtoc I test well blew out (see Figure 34) on the Campeche Bank in the Gulf of Mexico. The dominant dynamic feature of the Gulf of Mexico is the Loop Current, which enters the Gulf of Mexico at speeds of 50 to 75 cm/sec through the channel between the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba, runs northerly, undergoes a tight 180° turn, and exits the Gulf through the Florida Strait between Cuba and Florida. As shown on the figure, some of the current coming through the Yucatan Passage does turn westerly across the Campeche Bank, toward the spill site, and then turns clockwise northerly with the coastline. A local wind rose shown on the figure indicates that 80% of the time winds are from the southeastern quadrant during July, also acting so as to push the oil northerly along the coast.
Chapter 1: Physical Processes
Published in Gunnar Kullenberg, Pollutant Transfer and Transport in the Sea, 1982
Gunnar Kullenberg, Gunnar Kullenberg
From the Caribbean Sea the water passes into the Gulf of Mexico. The Caribbean Current turns into the Yucatan Current which forms the western part of the large anticyclonic current, the loop current, occupying the eastern half of the Gulf. This current feeds the Florida Current into the Atlantic. The circulation in the western half of the Gulf is not as well defined, varying considerably in space and time. There are indications of a large, anticyclonic gyre, elongated in the northeast-southwest direction. It would lead too far to discuss separately the other mediterranean seas of which the most important ones are the intercontinental Arctic and Austral-Asiatic and the intracontinental Persian (Arabian) Gulf and the Red Sea.
Oceanography
Published in Howard T. Odum, Elisabeth C. Odum, Mark T. Brown, Environment and Society in Florida, 2018
Howard T. Odum, Elisabeth C. Odum, Mark T. Brown
Particularly when driven by the winds in summer, most of the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico have a clockwise circulation (loop current in Figure 14.3), so that there is a deep water current from north to south along the edge of the shelf on the Florida west coast which then flows east to join the Gulf Stream. Sometimes this current circulates on top of the shelf.
Monitoring pelagic Sargassum inundation potential for coastal communities
Published in Journal of Operational Oceanography, 2023
Joaquin Trinanes, N.F. Putman, G. Goni, C. Hu, M. Wang
The movement of pelagic Sargassum through the North Atlantic Ocean generally follows major ocean circulation features (e.g. the North Equatorial Current and the North Brazil Current System in the tropical Atlantic, the Caribbean Current through the Caribbean Sea, the Loop Current and its associated rings in the Gulf of Mexico, and the Gulf Stream in the western North Atlantic) (Johns et al. 2020). Changes in wind patterns, such as related to the North Atlantic Oscillation, and nutrient availability at the ocean surface likewise play important roles in the basin-scale distribution and abundance of Sargassum (Brooks et al. 2018; Wang et al. 2019; Berline et al. 2020; Johns et al. 2020). At meso-spatial scales and synoptic temporal scales, recent experiments tracking mats of Sargassum and Sargassum-like drifters demonstrate that winds contribute additional velocity to floating Sargassum, altering its trajectory relative to water currents (Miron et al. 2020; Olascoaga et al. 2020; Putman et al. 2020). Accounting for wind and other inertial effects produces better predictions of Sargassum movement (Brooks et al. 2019; Putman et al. 2020).
Vortex–wall interaction on the β-plane and the generation of deep submesoscale cyclones by internal Kelvin Waves–current interactions
Published in Geophysical & Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics, 2020
Charly de Marez, Thomas Meunier, Pauline Tedesco, Pierre L'Hégaret, Xavier Carton
These western boundary systems share a common characteristics: they exhibit large values of Eddy Kinetic Energy (figure 1). This reflects the strong mesoscale activity occurring at western boundaries. Furthermore, examples of long lived, coherent and recurrent mesoscale vortices can be found in each of the western boundary systems, e.g. Gulf Stream rings (Richardson 1983), Agulhas rings (Olson and Evans 1986), Mozambique channel eddies (Halo et al.2014), Kuroshio rings (Li et al.1998), Loop Current Eddies (Meunier et al.2018), the Ras al Hadd dipole (L'Hégaret et al.2015, 2016) or the great Whirl (Vic et al.2014). Such mesoscale eddies are key features of the ocean circulation: they impact biological activities (Chelton et al.2011), tracer transport (Zhang et al.2014) and properties of the water column (Dong et al.2014).
i4Ocean: transfer function-based interactive visualization of ocean temperature and salinity volume data
Published in International Journal of Digital Earth, 2021
Fenglin Tian, Qing Mao, Yazhen Zhang, Ge Chen
In addition, we have observed a phenomenon shown in the red region in Figure 9. The salinity at the depth of each layer has a distinct boundary, which is fresher in the middle and saltier in the periphery. We have reason to suspect that this could be caused by anticyclonic eddy sheddings from Kuroshio Loop. In conclusion, all the results imply that the Kuroshio Loop Current might have intruded South China Sea water during eddy shedding processes, which is primarily confined to the upper – 400 m.