Seasonal sea level anomaly patterns over argentine continental shelf

RUIZ ETCHEVERRY, L.A. AND M. SARACENO

Venecia

Simposio; 20 years of Progress in Radar Altimetry symposium; 2012

We analyse the seasonal component of the satellite- derived Sea Level Anomaly (SLA) in the Continental Shelf of Argentina. The thermal steric effect computed using surface heat fluxes explains up to 70% of the annual amplitude of the SLA north of 44°S and up to 100% south of 44°S. The difference could be associated to two different factors: (i) in summer the seasonal thermocline is deeper in the north than in the south; (ii) The presence of an important source of fresh water in the north. To support these hypotheses we show that the seasonal steric height obtained by integration of the World Ocean Atlas 98 (WOA 98) density field is in better agreement with satellite SLA in the northern region.