![[-]](https://fuerteventura.click/images/collapse.png "[-]")
20-12-2022, 08:49 PM
Noticias:
A large marine whirlpool in the south of Gran Canaria is under study.
It is an anticyclonic whirlpool that formed 5 months ago and is about 2 times Fuerteventura in size.
As Canarias en Red advances, through Diario de Avisos, researchers from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), with the collaboration of the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN) and international groups from France, Austria, Germany and the United States, participate during the month of November and December in the second oceanographic campaign of the e-IMPACT Project (https://www.gob-iocag.ulpgc.es/e-impact) of the Plan National R+D+i, coordinated by the ULPGC to quantify the relevance of the Canary Islands eddies in the context of the biological carbon pump and climate change in the subtropical ocean.
For this, it has been studied, on board the Sarmiento de Gamboa Oceanographic Vessel, an anticyclonic whirlpool, with a warm core, which has been baptized with the name of 'Bentayga'. This whirlpool, as explained by the ULPGC in a press release, was generated in the south of the island of Gran Canaria, approximately five months ago, and during its life cycle it has been interacting with other eddies, as well as with the coastal waters of the African outcrop, modifying its properties and growing to a size greater than the islands of Tenerife and Gran Canaria together.
Researchers have tracked the whirlpool through satellite imagery and models of Copernicus from its origin to its current state. In order to understand the physical dynamics and biogeochemical processes associated with the structure of the whirlpool, the researchers have designed a study "very detailed, at high resolution temporal and spatial scales", for which they have used cutting-edge technology, such as the use of oceanographic probes, profilers, underwater vehicles and drifting buoys.
This has allowed as one of the relevant discoveries about 'Bentayga' the knowledge that it keeps inside "secrets of its recent past that it will move to the open ocean", since it has a nucleus of water of low salinity and oxygen that it incorporated a few months ago when contacting the margin of the coastal outcrop.
Also around its periphery circulates water rich in plankton that contributes to fixing carbon dioxide and that can sink into the deep ocean or feed the upper trophic levels, such as fish.
The results of the study will allow us to understand and validate the numerical models used to predict the role that ocean eddies play in the context of climate change in the subtropical ocean, producing and sequestering organic matter, as well as mitigating the increase of anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere.
Undergraduate, Master's and PhD students from the Faculty of Marine Sciences of the ULPGC and other institutions have participated in the campaign.
link to article for pic
A large marine whirlpool in the south of Gran Canaria is under study.
It is an anticyclonic whirlpool that formed 5 months ago and is about 2 times Fuerteventura in size.
As Canarias en Red advances, through Diario de Avisos, researchers from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), with the collaboration of the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN) and international groups from France, Austria, Germany and the United States, participate during the month of November and December in the second oceanographic campaign of the e-IMPACT Project (https://www.gob-iocag.ulpgc.es/e-impact) of the Plan National R+D+i, coordinated by the ULPGC to quantify the relevance of the Canary Islands eddies in the context of the biological carbon pump and climate change in the subtropical ocean.
For this, it has been studied, on board the Sarmiento de Gamboa Oceanographic Vessel, an anticyclonic whirlpool, with a warm core, which has been baptized with the name of 'Bentayga'. This whirlpool, as explained by the ULPGC in a press release, was generated in the south of the island of Gran Canaria, approximately five months ago, and during its life cycle it has been interacting with other eddies, as well as with the coastal waters of the African outcrop, modifying its properties and growing to a size greater than the islands of Tenerife and Gran Canaria together.
Researchers have tracked the whirlpool through satellite imagery and models of Copernicus from its origin to its current state. In order to understand the physical dynamics and biogeochemical processes associated with the structure of the whirlpool, the researchers have designed a study "very detailed, at high resolution temporal and spatial scales", for which they have used cutting-edge technology, such as the use of oceanographic probes, profilers, underwater vehicles and drifting buoys.
This has allowed as one of the relevant discoveries about 'Bentayga' the knowledge that it keeps inside "secrets of its recent past that it will move to the open ocean", since it has a nucleus of water of low salinity and oxygen that it incorporated a few months ago when contacting the margin of the coastal outcrop.
Also around its periphery circulates water rich in plankton that contributes to fixing carbon dioxide and that can sink into the deep ocean or feed the upper trophic levels, such as fish.
The results of the study will allow us to understand and validate the numerical models used to predict the role that ocean eddies play in the context of climate change in the subtropical ocean, producing and sequestering organic matter, as well as mitigating the increase of anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere.
Undergraduate, Master's and PhD students from the Faculty of Marine Sciences of the ULPGC and other institutions have participated in the campaign.
link to article for pic