Winds over the Sargasso Sea: December 2009 - March 2010

  • Released Monday, September 30, 2024
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This visualization of MERRA-2 surface winds over the Atlantic Ocean and Sargasso Sea shows some unusually strong westerly winds during the winter of 2009-2010. Here the slower winds are shown in blue while the faster winds are shown in shades of red. The blue oval shows the nominal area of the Sargasso Sea while the yellow rectangle marks the 20–40°N, 80–10°W geographic box.

The islands in the Caribbean have long been known for their crystal clear water and white sand beaches. But in the spring of 2011, something unusual occurred. Thousands of tons of brown alga, known as Sargassum, started washing up on beaches around the Caribbean. Sargassum has historically been found primarily in the Gulf of Mexico and in the North Atlantic Ocean bound by a spiral of currents including the Gulf Stream, North Atlantic Current, the Canary Current and the North Atlantic Equatorial Current. After extensive analysis, researchers found that in the winter of 2009 – 2010 unusually strong westerly winds in the Atlantic Ocean caused some of the floating Sargassum to be pushed from the Sargasso Sea towards Gibraltar where currents eventually carried it south and west across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean.

This visualization shows the MERRA-2 surface winds over the Atlantic Ocean during the winter of 2009-2010. In this visualizations, slower winds are shown in blue while faster winds are shown in shades of red. Several storms with high winds are visible over region of the Sargasso Sea during this time period.

This visualization of MERRA-2 surface winds over the Atlantic Ocean and Sargasso Sea shows some unusually strong westerly winds during the winter of 2009-2010. Here the slower winds are shown in blue while the faster winds are shown in shades of red. This version does not show the region outlines, date or colorbar.

An overlay of only the region outlines, date and colorbar with transparency.

An overlay of only the region outlines, date and colorbar with transparency.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Monday, September 30, 2024.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, August 28, 2024 at 11:11 AM EDT.

Related papers

Johns, E. M. et al. The establishment of a pelagic Sargassum population in the tropical Atlantic: biological consequences of a basin-scale long distance dispersal event. Prog. Oceanogr. 182, 102269 (2020).

Datasets used

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