Quiñones Meléndez, Estefanía

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    Surface circulation and lateral dispersion in the Mona Passage and off southwestern Puerto Rico
    (2018-12-12) Quiñones Meléndez, Estefanía; Canals Silander, Miguel F.; College of Arts and Sciences - Sciences; Mercado Irizarry, Aurelio; Rodríguez Abudo, Sylvia B.; Capella, Jorge E.; Department of Marine Sciences; Aponte, Luis D.
    The Mona Passage (MP) is characterized by its complex bathymetry and strong ocean currents forced by tides, winds and baroclinic flows. To understand the impacts of these currents on surface dispersion processes within and around the MP, clusters of GPS-tracked drifters were deployed in early February 2015 and in late April 2017. The 2017 deployment followed the space-filling configuration described by Poje et al. (2014) and denotes the first time that a significant number of clustered drifters (>20) was deployed simultaneously near the MP. The current-following drifters were built in-house following the Coastal Dynamics Experiment (CODE) design introduced by Davis (1985). Drifter velocity observations confirmed the existence of strong, tidally dominated currents modulated by baroclinic processes such as mesoscale eddies and filaments. The wind effect on the drifters was quantified through an inter-comparison between surface current velocity estimates (from the drifters) and observations from high frequency radars. The dispersion dynamics of particles were studied by analyzing drifter movements with respect to the deployment site (absolute dispersion), and with respect to each other (relative dispersion). Relative dispersion was based on initial separation distances ranging from ~100 m, for drifter pairs in small triangles (sets of three), to ~2 km, for drifter pairs in large triangles (sets of nine). For the two clusters deployed, the scale-dependent relative dispersion rate was found to be very similar for scales smaller than 10 km, and consistent with Richardson’s two-thirds law. However, for scales larger than 50 km, both clusters showed different separation rates.