Lagrangian Characterization of Surface Transport From the Equatorial Atlantic to the Caribbean Sea Using Climatological Lagrangian Coherent Structures and Self‐Organizing Maps

Abstract

This study presents an assessment of the transport of suspended material by surface ocean currents, which have a critical role in determining the connectivity and distribution of living and non‐living material. Lagrangian experiments reveal pathways from the Equatorial Atlantic to 10 strategic regions within the Caribbean Sea, determined by considering the space‐time variability of climatological Lagrangian Coherent Structures, which act as recurrent attracting pathways and transport barriers. Due to windage or Stokes drift, wind forcing is a significant factor in determining the spatial locations where particles cluster and the time needed to reach the Caribbean from the Equatorial Atlantic. Pathways shift westward within the Caribbean and take less time to arrive with increasing wind influence. Depending on the wind effect, the particles show higher confluence in different areas of the Caribbean. A case study is presented for the Mexican Caribbean nearshore area, isolated from ocean‐current trajectories. Here, wind weakens the transport barrier responsible for this isolation and causes particle confluence toward that region. Spatial patterns of the Eulerian velocity identified through Self‐Organizing Maps, with time dependence given by their best matching units, can reproduce the characteristic Lagrangian patterns of surface current climate variability. Our study demonstrates the application of tools from dynamical systems and unsupervised neural networks to understand Lagrangian patterns and identify the processes that drive them. These findings improve our understanding of transport mechanisms of suspended material by surface ocean currents in the Western Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea, which is essential for managing and conserving marine ecosystems.

Haline Tolerance of Stomatopod (Crustacea) Larvae and Pelagic Dispersal of Two Common Species in the Western Atlantic

“…The analysis GLBv0.08 experiment was used in this study. As in a previous study (Allende-Arandía et al, 2023), we used daily issues of the Global HYCOM (25 years, 1994-2018) to estimate the daily mean current vectors at surface waters (u and v components).…”

The Amazon River plume—a Lagrangian view

“…When drifters were advected into deeper water, they began looping in anticyclonic eddies with a period of $ 11 d. The drift experiment of Müller-Karger et al (1988) showed that the discharge of the Amazon River is carried offshore by the retroflection of the NBC into the NECC and can be traced thousands of kilometers into the WTNA. The complexity of seasonal advection patterns has been documented with model simulations using Lagrangian tracers to visualize the circulation patterns in the WTNA (Coles et al 2013) and the transport of suspended matter from the NBC into the Caribbean Sea (Allende-Arandia et al 2023).…”