Posted by Johann Lutjeharms on November 08, 2000 at 05:34:03 (UTC):
In some ways these eddies are similar to those we found imbedded in Natal Pulses of the Agulhas Current. A paper on this subject has just been submitted to GRL. Electronic preprints are available from Olaf Boebel at URI.
In that paper we use Eulerian as well as Lagrangian observations to show that the cyclones in this meander of the Agulhas Current extend to great depth. This naturally has all kinds of interesting implications for the mechanism for Agulhas ring occlusion at the Agulhas retroflection farther downstream. Work by Boebel et al. that is in progress also demonstrates that when the Natal Pulses pass the southern tip of the African continent, these cyclones move off into the South Atlantic where they become a component of the very high mesoscale turbulence of the "Cape Cauldron" in the southern part of the Cape Basin, adjacent to South Africa.
We believe that these cylones in Natal Pulses gain their energy form the Agulhas Current itself. Natal Pulses are generated as instabilities to the trajectory of the Agulhas Current farther upstream (see de Ruijter et al., ). My perhaps simplistic question on this poster by Watts et al. addresses the same problem. What do you think is the origen of the disturbance and does the meander cause the eddy, or the other way round?