Thirteen years of drifting data. Surface currents in the Canary Islands region

Abstract

During the last thirteen years 121 NOAA drifters have been deployed at the ESTOC site (European Station for Time-Series in the Ocean, Canary Islands), located in the North Atlantic (29°10'N, 15°30'W), ranging in time from 1998 to nowadays. The study of their trajectories has provided a good knowledge about the surface current system in this area. Wind and current data have also been added to improve the results. All this information has been implemented into a model intended to cover marine emergency situations in the Canarian archipelago waters, such as search and rescue operations and pollutant dispersal. The aim is to develop an Operational System, based in the combination of observations and analyses of oceanographic data with numerical simulation, in order to predict the drifting objects trajectories.