Ocean Eddies’ Influence on Lula Field, Santos Basin, Brazil

Abstract

Current data measured by an instrumented mooring line deployed at the Santos Basin, in a water depth of 2200 m, show a mean velocity of 0.20 m/s with no preferential direction. Extreme current events detected were associated with the presence of a pair of eddies with a dipole configuration. The jet stream created by the interaction of the cyclone-anticyclone pair was able to generate speeds up to 1.2 m/s at the first hundred meters of the water column. An investigative study with sea surface height anomaly fields processed from environmental satellites clearly shows the eddy structure during extreme current events.