NSF Provides $3.4 Million to Study Climatically Important Agulhas Current

July 02, 2009 — Virginia Key — Three-years of in situ measurements, combined with a long-track satellite data to createlong-term index of Agulhas Current transport - The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it is funding a study with the goal of building a multi-decadal time series of Agulhas Current volume transport, which will contribute to the Global Ocean Observing System. Led by Principal Investigator, Lisa Beal, Ph.D. of the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, the international team will include scientists from the National Oceanography Centre (Southampton, United Kingdom) and the University of Cape Town (Cape Town, South Africa). The Agulhas Current is the 'Gulf Stream' of the southern Indian Ocean, carrying warm and salty tropical waters southward along the east coast of Africa as a narrow, fast jet. At the tip of Africa the Agulhas retroflects, looping around to eventually flow eastward toward Australia. This retroflection is unstable and regularly sheds large Agulhas Rings, which carry Indian Ocean waters into the South Atlantic. 'We anticipate this study will shed light on the seasonal to decadal variability of the Agulhas,' said Beal.