{"id":2,"date":"2019-10-23T09:27:33","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T08:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/m159\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2019-10-24T18:27:11","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T17:27:11","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/m159\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About M159"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"RV
RV METEOR. Photo: Martin Visbeck<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the blog of expedition M159<\/a> of the German research vessel METEOR. The team onboard investigates the western boundary current system off South America. These currents are important for regional and global ocean and climate variability. On shorter time scales they modulate the tropical Atlantic climate and associate rain fall variability over Brasil, the Caribbean and West Africa. The deep flows are part of the Atlantic wide meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). This circulation involved deep water formation in the Labrador, Irminger and Nordic Seas, passes along the East coast of the United States, the Bahamans and flows along the South American continent. Our project maintains a long term ocean observatory of this the western boundary of the coast of Brasil at 11\u00b0S. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One particular focus of the observations at the western boundary off Brazil is the transport variability of the relatively shallow North Brazil Undercurrent (NBUC) \u2013 reaching from the surface to 300m depths as part of the northward flowing upper branch of the AMOC. The NBUC is also part of the subtropical cells (STCs) \u2013 which regulate the tropical Atlantic surface temperatures on time-scales from intraseasonal to decadal. These observations will be complemented with the observations obtained on the meridional section across the equator at 35\u00b0W especially with respect to the signal propagation and changes of water masses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other focus is on the southward flowing the deep western boundary current (DBWC) which transports cold water south in depths below 1500m. This lower branch of the AMOC is part of the global thermo-haline circulation – under climate change this current is predicted to slow down. The measurements, when maintained over a long time, will be able to document this important consequence of climate change on the ocean. <\/p>\n\n\n\n