[1] The Humboldt Current System is the most productive of the eastern boundary currents. In the northern part, the Peru Current System (PCS) is located between 5°S and 20°S. Along the Peruvian coast, an equatorward wind forces a strong coastal upwelling. A high resolution model is designed to investigate the mean circulation, the seasonal cycle, and the mesoscale dynamics for the PCS. The model is able to reproduce the equatorward Peru Coastal Current (PCC), the Peru Chile Under-Current (PCUC) which follows the shelf break towards the pole, and the Peru-Chile Counter-Current (PCCC) which flows directly towards the south and veers to the west around 15°S. While the upper part of the PCUC is close to the surface and might even outcrop as a counter current, the bottom part follows f H isolines. The PCCC appears to be directly forced by the cyclonic wind stress curl. The model is able to produce the upwelling front, the cold water tongue which extends toward the equator and the equatorial front as described in the literature. Model seasonal changes in SST and SSH are compared to measurements. For the central PCS, model EKE is 10% to 30% lower than the observations. The model eddy diameters follow a strong equatorward increase. The injection length scales, derived from the energy spectra, strongly correlate to the Rossby radius of deformation, confirming the predominant role of baroclinic instability. At 3°S, the model solution appears to switch from a turbulent oceanic regime to an equatorial regime dominated by zonal currents.Citation: Penven, P., V. Echevin, J. Pasapera, F. Colas, and J. Tam (2005), Average circulation, seasonal cycle, and mesoscale dynamics of the Peru Current System: A modeling approach,

Pairs of asteroids sharing similar heliocentric orbits, but not bound together, were found recently. Backward integrations of their orbits indicated that they separated gently with low relative velocities, but did not provide additional insight into their formation mechanism. A previously hypothesized rotational fission process may explain their formation-critical predictions are that the mass ratios are less than about 0.2 and, as the mass ratio approaches this upper limit, the spin period of the larger body becomes long. Here we report photometric observations of a sample of asteroid pairs, revealing that the primaries of pairs with mass ratios much less than 0.2 rotate rapidly, near their critical fission frequency. As the mass ratio approaches 0.2, the primary period grows long. This occurs as the total energy of the system approaches zero, requiring the asteroid pair to extract an increasing fraction of energy from the primary's spin in order to escape. We do not find asteroid pairs with mass ratios larger than 0.2. Rotationally fissioned systems beyond this limit have insufficient energy to disrupt. We conclude that asteroid pairs are formed by the rotational fission of a parent asteroid into a proto-binary system, which subsequently disrupts under its own internal system dynamics soon after formation.