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Pathways of surface oceanic water intrusion into the Amazon Continental Shelf

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Abstract

The Amazon Continental Shelf (ACS) is a shallow region (< 100 m), with a maximum width of 330 km, which encloses the northern portion of the Brazilian continental shelf and has great ecological and climatic importance on a global scale. Although important scientific efforts have been made to understand the hydrodynamics of the ACS and the dispersion of the Amazon River plume, there are still few studies that address surface oceanic water intrusion into the ACS. This study describes the existence of preferential surface oceanic water intrusion pathways into the ACS along 3 sectors: Maranhão (MA shelf), Pará (PA shelf) and Amapá (AP shelf). The analysis is based on: (i) 306 surface drifter trajectories along 1344 km of the ACS (provided by the Global Drifter Program) and (ii) 20 years of Lagrangian simulations (with Parcels model forced by currents from the reanalysis GLORYS). The results show that the MA shelf sector is the main pathway for surface oceanic water intrusions into the ACS, corresponding to 56% of the intrusions, followed by PA shelf (43%) and AP shelf (1%). During the austral summer, intrusions occur with a higher frequency in PA and AP shelf. The MA shelf shows weak seasonality in the intrusions. The temporal variability of particle intrusion rates into the ACS is directly related to the variability of the trade winds, and the meso-scale circulation associated with the North Brazil Current and the North Equatorial Countercurrent.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the Global Drifter Program repository [https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/archive/arc0199/0248584/1.1/data/0-data/] and Copernicus Marine Service repository [https://data.marine.copernicus.eu/product/GLOBAL_MULTIYEAR_PHY_001_030/description].

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the NOAA Global Drifter Program (NOAA/AOML) for providing hourly location and current velocity collected by satellite-tracked surface drifting buoys and Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) for providing GLORYS results. Pedro Paulo de Freitas, Mauro Cirano and Carlos Eduardo Peres Teixeira wish to thank the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) for the financial support through grants 406506/2022-1, 310902/2018-5, 315289/2021-0, respectively. Vando José Costa Gomes wish to thank the Fundação Amazônia de Amparo a Estudos e Pesquisas (FAPESPA) and the Fundação de Amparo e Desenvolvimento da Pesquisa (FADESP) for the financial support through grants 015/2019-2019/307839.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA), Salinópolis, Pará, Brazil

    Pedro Paulo de Freitas, Francisco Flávio de Brito Borges, Camilo Andrés Guerrero-Martin & Vando José Costa Gomes

  2. Departamento de Meteorologia, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Mauro Cirano

  3. Instituto de Ciências do Mar, Labomar, Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC), Fortaleza, Brazil

    Carlos Eduardo Peres Teixeira

  4. Centro Oceanográfico de A Coruña, Instituto Español de Oceanografia (IEO-CSIC), A Coruña, Spain

    Martinho Marta-Almeida

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on the Coastal Ocean and Shelf Seas Task Team (COSS-TT) meeting, Montreal, Canada, May 2-4, 2023.

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de Freitas, P.P., Cirano, M., Teixeira, C.E.P. et al. Pathways of surface oceanic water intrusion into the Amazon Continental Shelf. Ocean Dynamics 74, 321–334 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-024-01606-x

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