The Vitoria eddy and its relation to the Brazil Current

Abstract

In late austral summer 1991 a cyclonic thermocline eddy was detected in the subtropical western South Atlantic off the Brazilian shelf near the city of Vitoria. This Vitoria eddy was tracked for 55 days by surface drifters drogued at 100 m depth. The drifters had been deployed in the western boundary current regime by FS Meteor as part of a basinwide surface current study. The analysis of a combined CTD/XBT section across the Vitoria eddy, together with drifter data and satellite images of the thermal surface structure revealed the unexpected complexity of the region. The hydrographic and kinematic properties and anomalies of the Vitoria eddy are analyzed and compared with similar vortices described elsewhere in literature. -from Authors