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Over the Texas-Louisiana Shelf in the Northern Gulf of Mexico, the eutrophic, fresh Mississippi/Atchafalaya river plume isolates saltier waters below, supporting the formation of bottom hypoxia in summer. The plume also generates strong density fronts, features of the circulation that are known pathways for the exchange of water between the ocean surface and the deep. Using high-resolution ocean observations and numerical simulations, we demonstrate how the summer land-sea breeze generates rapid vertical exchange at the plume fronts. We show that the interaction between the land-sea breeze and the fronts leads to convergence/divergence in the surface mixed layer, which further facilitates a slantwise circulation that subducts surface water along isopycnals into the interior and upwells bottom waters to the surface. This process causes significant vertical displacements of water parcels and creates a ventilation pathway for the bottom water in the northern Gulf. The ventilation of bottom water can bypass the stratification barrier associated with the Mississippi/Atchafalaya river plume and might impact the dynamics of the region’s dead zone.

Gliders are low‐power autonomous underwater vehicles used to obtain oceanic measurements in vertical sections. Assimilation of glider temperature and salinity into coastal ocean circulation models holds the potential to improve the ocean subsurface structure estimate. In this study, the impact of assimilation of glider observations is studied using a four‐dimensional variational (4DVAR) data assimilation and forecast system set offshore of Oregon and Washington on the U.S. West Coast. Four test cases are compared: (1) no assimilation, (2) assimilation of glider temperature and salinity data alone, (3) assimilation of the glider data in combination with the surface observations including satellite sea surface temperature, sea surface height, and high‐frequency radar surface velocities, and (4) assimilation of the surface data alone. It is found that the assimilation of glider observations alone creates unphysical eddies in the vicinity of the glider transect. As a consequence, the forecast errors in the surface velocity and temperature increase compared to the case without data assimilation. Assimilation of surface and subsurface observations in combination prevents these features from forming and reduces the errors in the forecasts for the subsurface fields compared to the other three experiments. These improvements persisted in 21‐day forecasts run after the last data assimilation cycle.

The Columbia River (CR) is the largest source of freshwater along the U.S. Pacific coast. The resultant plume is often transported southward and offshore forming a large buoyant feature off Oregon and northern California in spring‐summer—the offshore CR plume. Observations from autonomous underwater gliders and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite imagery are used to characterize the optics of the offshore CR plume off Newport, Oregon. Vertical sections, under contrasting river flow conditions, reveal a low‐salinity and warm surface layer of ∼20–25 m (fresher in spring and warmer in summer), high Colored Dissolved Organic Matter (CDOM) concentration, and backscatter, and associated with the base of the plume high chlorophyll fluorescence. Plume characteristics vary in the offshore direction as the warm and fresh surface layer thickens progressively to an average 30–40 m of depth 270–310 km offshore; CDOM, backscatter, and chlorophyll fluorescence decrease in the upper 20 m and increase at subsurface levels (30–50 m depth). MODIS normalized water‐leaving radiance (nLw(λ)) spectra for CR plume cases show enhanced water‐leaving radiance at green bands (as compared to no‐CR plume cases) up to ∼154 km from shore. Farther offshore, the spectral shapes for both cases are very similar, and consequently, a contrasting color signature of low‐salinity plume water is practically imperceptible from ocean color remote sensing. Empirical algorithms based on multivariate regression analyses of nLw(λ) plus SST data produce more accurate results detecting offshore plume waters than previous studies using single visible bands (e.g., a_dg(412) or nLw(555)).