Lagrangian characterization of the southwestern Atlantic from a dense surface drifter deployment

The Southwestern Atlantic (SWA) is characterized by its large Eddy Kinetic Energy as the result of the confluence of two major western boundary currents, the northward flowing Malvinas Current (MC) and the southward flowing Brazil Current. The SWA study was addressed in the literature based on altimetry data, in situ measurements, regional models and ocean reanalysis. The present study constitutes the first effort to sample a portion of the SWA, with a dense drifter array (N = 62) deployment. The drifters, drogued at 15 m depths, were deployed across the MC and the Argentine Continental Shelf along two zonal transects located at 47°S and 47.25°S, between the 8th and the September 9, 2021. Drifters were set to deliver their position every 10 and 60 min, providing accurate Lagrangian trajectories that provide information on a large range of space and time scales of the surface currents. Three regions are clearly identified based on the analysis of the speed of the drifters, of their trajectories and of the spectral density of their velocities: the continental shelf, the slope and the open ocean. The comparison of the trajectories of the drifters with satellite altimetry images shows that, in general, drifters follow mesoscale features that are detectable in satellite altimetry maps. The analysis of the drifter trajectories also allowed us the study of submesoscale features of the flow (1–10 km) that are not observable in satellite altimetry data. Comparison with cloud-free, high-resolution color images, shows that drifter trajectories organized by the mesoscale flow might also locally follow sub-mesoscale features. In frontal regions it was found that drifter velocities double satellite altimetry geostrophic velocities, which suggests that the dynamics at those regions is largely dominated by ageostrophic components. The ageostrophic Ekman component might explain the direction of the drifters when strong winds from a given direction prevail for several days and the drifters are not in a region with large sea surface height (SSH) gradients. The joint analysis of drifters’ trajectory and SSH clearly depicts that mesoscale features on the open ocean region control the cross-shelf exchanges between the MC and open ocean regions as well as the strength and width of the MC. Finally, the spatial density distribution of the drifters during the first hours after deployment and within a small eddy also allowed us to characterize the flow in terms of its divergence, vorticity and strain, indicating that the MC is geostrophic and has a jet-like behavior while the eddy is largely ageostrophic and has a dominant vorticity component over strain. We conclude observing that the analysis of a dense array of drifters provides valuable information of the flow that cannot be attained solely based on satellite data.