Presenter: A Miguel Piecho-Santos (IPMA / CCMAR)

Description:
Argo floats are one of the most important methods to observe the global ocean in a sustainable manner. This global monitoring of the ocean is conducted in the frame of the Argo program, an international program that collects information from the interior of the ocean using a fleet of robotic instruments (floats) that drift with the ocean currents (mainly, at 1000 m) and make vertical profiles every 10 days between the surface and the 2000 m ocean layer. The Gulf of Cadiz (GoC) is a very dynamic system with an inflow of Atlantic Water to the Mediterranean Sea and outflow of Mediterranean Water (MW) flowing into the North Atlantic and along European west coasts. The MW outflow spreads in the NE part of the GoC as a bottom-gravity current but at the western part of the gulf, the flow stabilizes and continues flowing against the slope between the depths of 400 to 2000 m along the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula and reaching latitudes of up to 55^o N. The MW is characterized by temperature and salinity maxima at the depths of the main cores (400 m, 800 m and 1200 m), low-nutrient and oxygen contents, and relatively high abundance of particles. This highly dynamic system poses interesting challenges to keep a sustainable observing system in the GoC based on Argo floats. For this reason, we use the VirtualFleet model and a genetic algorithm to simulate the best configuration of three floats, each one deployed in three different regions of the GoC, and that allows the maximum resident time of them in the same area. The best results are for the following configurations, regarding parking depth (m), vertical speed (m/s) and cycle duration (days): (1) simulation 1 (long= -8.855) - 795 m; 0.031 m/s; 10 days; (ii) S2 (long = -8.146) - 711 m; 0.049 m/s; 10 days; and (iii) S3 (long = -7.438) - 392 m; 0.09 m/s; 9 days. These results will allow adapting the Argo program standard configuration to optimize the monitoring in the GoC using Argo floats.