Blog entry by Felipe Vilela-Silva
Enthusiastic scientists have just departed from St John’s, Newfoundland to a key region where a significant portion of the AMOC’s lower limb separates from the continental slope and spreads dense water masses formed at higher latitudes towards the interior of the North Atlantic. On board the R/V L’Atalante, the researchers will recover 10 moorings, deploy 12 RAFOS floats and 5 Deep-Argo floats, sample the hydrography and velocity structure of the whole water column at high resolution, and collect sediment cores.
Among many goals, these observations will unravel the lack of coherence in one of AMOC’s key component – the deep western boundary current – at the North Atlantic “Transition Zone” (Flemish Cap and the Grand banks), and help to understand how the southward transport of deep subpolar water masses can induce a long-term AMOC response across latitudes.
