Evolution of the western South Atlantic circulation over the past 2000 years: insights for AMOC and wind-driven gyre variability

• Grant number: 22/11723-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: March 15, 2023
• End date: September 15, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Oceanography - Physical Oceanography
• Principal Investigator: Ilana Elazari Klein Coaracy Wainer
• Grantee: Fernanda Marcello de Oliveira
• Supervisor: Myriam Khodri
• Host Institution: Instituto Oceanográfico (IO). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL), France
• Associated to the scholarship: 21/04984-1 - Paleoceanographic evolution of the western South Atlantic Ocean circulation: a hotspot of evidence for global climate changes, BP.PD

Abstract

This project proposes to investigate the paleoceanographic evolution of the western SouthAtlantic circulation with focus on the past 2,000 years (2k), at the LOCEAN-IPSL - SorbonneUniversit ´ e, under the supervision of Dr. Myriam Khodri, who is currently involved in past2k PMIP4-CMIP6 simulations, investigating the influence of external forcings on climatevariability and change. Our goal is to reconstruct the past behavior of the upper limb ofthe Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and the South Atlantic subtropicalgyre (SASG) circulation in the western and subtropical South Atlantic with the latestpaleoceanographic model simulation resources in order to shed light on our interpretationof the large-scale ocean circulation history, from past to future. The AMOC upper limband the SASG are coupled up to the South Atlantic western boundary where their watersget meridionally split by the bifurcation of the southern South Equatorial Current (sSEC).This makes the sSEC bifurcation an useful fingerprint for simultaneous variations in theSASG and the AMOC. Therefore, it is expected to obtain a consistent framework for thetemporal evolution of the sSEC bifurcation latitude (SBL) index in association with thestrength of the north- and southward western boundary currents which are embedded inbroader oceanographic contexts that associate to global scale changes.