The California Current System is characterized by upwelling and rich mesoscale eddy activity. Cyclonic eddies generally pinch off from meanders in the California Current, potentially trapping upwelled water along the coast and transporting it offshore. Here, we use satellite-derived measurements of particulate organic carbon (POC) as a tracer of coastal water to show that cyclones located offshore that were generated near the coast contain higher carbon concentrations in their interior than cyclones of the same amplitude generated offshore. This indicates that eddies are in fact trapping and transporting coastal water offshore, resulting in an offshore POC enrichment of 20.9 ± 11 Gg year−1. This POC enrichment due to the coastally-generated eddies extends for 1000 km from shore. This analysis provides large-scale observational-based evidence that eddies play a quantitatively important role in the offshore transport of coastal water, substantially widening the area influenced by highly productive upwelled waters in the California Current System.
In the California Current System, cross‐shore transport of upwelled, nutrient‐rich waters from the coastal margin to the open ocean can occur within intermittent, submesoscale‐to‐mesoscale features such as filaments. Time‐varying spatial gradients within filaments affect net cross‐shore fluxes of physical, biological, and chemical tracers but require high‐resolution measurements to accurately estimate. In June 2017, the
- Award ID(s):
- 1637632
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10449264
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
- Volume:
- 126
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 2169-9275
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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