The influence of Loop Current perturbations on the formation and evolution of Tortugas eddies in the southern Straits of Florida

Fratantoni, Paula S.; Lee, Thomas N.; Podesta, Guillermo; Muller‐Karger, Frank E.

doi:10.1029/98jc02147

Cited by 140 publications

(125 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…These cold-core, counter-clockwise rotating eddies exist on a spatial scale of approximately 100 km cross-shelf and 180 km along-shelf, and tend to stall at the entrance to the SOF, where they can reside for several weeks to months until they move eastward into the SOF at about 5 to 10 km d -1 . As they propagate past the middle and upper FK, the MEs elongate alongshore, are sometimes sheared apart, and accelerate in alongshore translation to approximately 3 times their speed in the western SOF (Lee et al 1992, Fratantoni et al 1998; Fig. 1).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Patterns and processes of larval fish supply to the coral reefs of the upper Florida Keys

D’Alessandro¹,

Sponaugle²,

Lee³

2007

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Patterns and processes of larval fish supply to the coral reefs of the upper Florida Keys

D’Alessandro¹,

Sponaugle²,

Lee³

2007

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

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“…Cold-core, cyclonic eddies with diameters of 100-200 km travel along the LC front in the Gulf of Mexico and enter the Straits of Florida near the Dry Tortugas. They move downstream along the Keys outer shelf over a period of 1-3 months with increasing forward speed and decreasing size (Lee et al 1994;Fratantoni et al 1998). As the width of the Straits of Florida narrows in the middle Keys, where the channel makes its turn toward the north, the topographic constraint increases (i.e., FC flow converges upon steep topography of the middle and upper Keys).…”

Section: Acknowledgmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous studies have shown that the outer shelf region of the upper Florida Keys is strongly influenced by the FC and the transient passage of FC meanders and eddies (Lee et al 1992(Lee et al , 1994. Satellite imagery has shown that frontal eddies (recirculating vortices that travel along current fronts) occur all along the boundary of the Loop Current (LC) and the FC on scales of kilometers to a few hundred kilometers in diameter Fratantoni et al 1998). The larger mesoscale eddies form where topographic constraints are weak (i.e., in this system, the Gulf of Mexico, and the southern Straits of Florida).…”

Section: Acknowledgmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Florida Current frontal eddies and the settlement of coral reef fishes

et al. 2005

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We deployed three replicate larval light traps off the upper Florida Keys from June-September 2001 to measure the delivery of settlement-stage fish larvae to the coral reefs. Nightly measures of larval abundance were compared to water temperatures measured across the outer reef, nearby wind records, and the alongshore and cross-shelf components of the currents measured at the seaward edge of the reef. These time series, together with satellitederived sea surface temperature and color fields indicate that a very large multi-taxa larval pulse on 20 July was directly associated with the passage of a Florida Current (FC) sub-mesoscale frontal eddy embedded within the elongated remnant of a mesoscale eddy. A second large pulse of larvae occurred when a similar mesoscale eddy passed the upper Keys in mid-June. Periods of increased tidal bore activity occurred with the passage of these eddies. Semidiurnal internal tides caused near-bottom onshore intrusions of cooler slope waters during periods of onshore meanders of the FC front when the downstream baroclinic flow and stratification increased at the reef margin. The high abundance and similarity in larval ages within taxa on 20 July indicate a Keys shelf origin, although the temporal and spatial scales of entrainment cannot be resolved. The passage of a third mesoscale eddy in September did not result in a larval pulse, possibly because of a mismatch between biological and physical criteria, several of which must be met for larval transport by mesoscale eddies to be successful.

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“…Some authors have discussed several events where small cyclonic eddies on the periphery of the Loop Current influence the shedding of the LC rings (Fratantoni et al, 1998;Zavala-Hidalgo et al, 2003;Chérubin et al, 2006;Schmitz, 2005). Using 3 yr of direct mooring observations together with altimetry data Athié et al (2011) find that some shedding events are associated with cyclonic anomalies coming from the Caribbean producing an eastward shift of the LC core.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Lagrangian approach to the Loop Current eddy separation

Andrade-Canto¹,

Sheinbaum²,

Sansón³

2013

Nonlin. Processes Geophys.

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Abstract. Determining when and how a Loop Current eddy (LCE) in the Gulf of Mexico will finally separate is a difficult task, since several detachment re-attachment processes can occur during one of these events. Separation is usually defined based on snapshots of Eulerian fields such as sea surface height (SSH) but here we suggest that a Lagrangian view of the LCE separation process is more appropriate and objective. The basic idea is very simple: separation should be defined whenever water particles from the cyclonic side of the Loop Current move swiftly from the Yucatan Peninsula to the Florida Straits instead of penetrating into the NE Gulf of Mexico. The properties of backward-time finite time Lyapunov exponents (FTLE) computed from a numerical model of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea are used to estimate the "skeleton" of flow and the structures involved in LCE detachment events. An Eulerian metric is defined, based on the slope of the strain direction of the instantaneous hyperbolic point of the Loop Current anticyclone that provides useful information to forecast final LCE detachments. We highlight cases in which an LCE separation metric based on SSH contours (Leben, 2005) suggests there is a separated LCE that later reattaches, whereas the slope method and FTLE structure indicate the eddy remains dynamically connected to the Loop Current during the process.

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The influence of Loop Current perturbations on the formation and evolution of Tortugas eddies in the southern Straits of Florida

Cited by 140 publications

References 26 publications

Patterns and processes of larval fish supply to the coral reefs of the upper Florida Keys

Patterns and processes of larval fish supply to the coral reefs of the upper Florida Keys

Florida Current frontal eddies and the settlement of coral reef fishes

A Lagrangian approach to the Loop Current eddy separation

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