Surface currents in the macaronesian region: thirteen years of drifting data

Abstract

More than 500 drifting buoys were deployed during the period of 1998 – 2010 in the Macaronesian region. The study of their trajectories has provided a good knowledge about the surface current system in this area. All this information has been implemented into a model intended to cover marine emergency situations in the Macaronesian archipelagos, such as search and rescue operations and pollut- ant dispersal. The aim is to develop an Operational System, based in the combina- tion of observations and analyses of oceanographic data with numerical simula- tion, in order to predict the drifting objects trajectories