Abstract
Consistent with satellite-tracked trajectories of drogued drifters, but
at odds with Eulerian assessment of satellite-altimetry measurements of
sea-surface height, we show that North Brazil Currents Rings (NBCRs) are
incapable of bypassing the Lesser Antilles as structures that coherently
transport material. The nature of the inability of the de-facto
oceanographic Eulerian, streamline-based eddy detection technique to
produce a correct assessment is rooted in its lack of objectivity. We
arrive at this conclusion by applying geodesic eddy detection on the
altimetric dataset over nearly its entire extent. While we detect
northwestward translating NBCRs that can be classified as coherent
Lagrangian eddies, they typically experience strong filamentation and
complete loss of coherence prior to reaching the Lesser Antilles.
Moreover, the filamented material hardly penetrates into the Caribbean
Sea, let alone the Gulf of Mexico, and not without substantively mixing
with the ambient fluid east of the archipelago.