Estimates of Upwelling and Transport West of the Galápagos Archipelago from Glider Observations — Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
  1. Schedule
  2. 36. Tropical oceanography: processes and dynamics
  3. Estimates of Upwelling and Transport West of the Galápagos Archipelago from Glider Observations

Estimates of Upwelling and Transport West of the Galápagos Archipelago from Glider Observations (#140)

Julie Jakoboski 1 , Breck Owens 2 , Kristopher Karnauskas 3 , Robert Todd 2 , Daniel Rudnick 4
  1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, United States
  2. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, US
  3. University of Colorado - Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA
  4. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA, USA

The Galápagos Archipelago (GA) lies directly in the path of the Pacific Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) in the eastern equatorial Pacific.  The path of the EUC as it reaches the GA has been shown previously to have impacts on climate models, the local GA ecosystem, and regional ocean dynamics.  The EUC has been observed extensively in the central Pacific using shipboard instruments and moorings; however, the path of the EUC as it reaches the GA is largely unknown.  Recent glider observations obtained through the Repeat Observations by Gliders in the Equatorial Region (ROGER) project provide high temporal and spatial resolution measurements of ocean current velocity from the surface to 1000 m depth throughout a three year period in the vicinity of the GA.  A subset of observations is used to estimate volume transport into the region just west of the GA and the path of the EUC around the GA.  The vertical velocity profile resulting from the transport calculations and estimated potential vorticity sections are used to understand the dynamics contributing to the existence of the region of anomalously cool sea surface temperature adjacent to western coast of the GA known as the Galápagos Cold Pool.

#AMOS2019