Real-Time Ocean Monitoring Through Lagragian Drifters During an Offshore Drilling Operation Available to Purchase

MONDO Project is a surface ocean monitoring program for offshore operations never done before in Brazilian waters. It consisted on the periodic deployment of satellite tracked ocean drifters that provides real-time surface ocean currents and temperature data. Throughout September–November 2007, 40 satellite tracked ocean drifters were deployed at Santos Basin, located at the Brazilian Southeastern Ocean Bight. The results of this project can be used to study a wide range of subjects about ocean dynamics such as eddy activity, predictability, lagrangian integral scales, diffusivity, wind influence, etc. This paper is focused on eddies activities and ocean dynamics predictability. It can be observed that the number of anticyclonic eddies is a little higher than cyclonic ones during 2007 spring and that they present high values of relative vorticity (O(±10⁻⁵ s⁻¹)). The rotation period lies between 16 days (anticyclonic) and 21days (cyclonic), with tangential velocities around 0.4 m/s. Comparison with data measured by drifters and altimetry showed good results, which indicates that a more extensive analysis about eddies in this region using altimetry data should provide relevant results. The methods of non-linear analysis applied to MONDO Project data allowed to estimate the predictability of the phenomena within Rossby radius scale (∼30 km). The results indicate that the prediction errors tend to double for periods greater than 3 days. It is suggested also that at least 4 variables should be considered in modeling studies on this region.