A study of the freshwater discharge from the Amazon River into the tropical Atlantic using multi‐sensor data

We study freshwater discharge from the Amazon River into the tropical Atlantic using monthly mean multi‐sensor data from September 1997 to July 2003. In order to demonstrate freshwater discharge, we used chlorophyll concentration (Chl_a) and diffuse attenuation coefficient (DAC) measured by the Sea‐viewing Wide Field‐of‐view Sensor (SeaWiFS), and salt steric height anomaly (Δη′ S ) derived from Integrated Multi‐Sensor Data Analysis (IMSDA). IMSDA was obtained from estimating the long term‐time series of Δη′ S by removing the thermal steric height anomaly (η′ T ) from altimetry data. Comparisons of long‐term time series of Δη′ S , Chl_a, and DAC were made with mooring data at 8°N, 38°W, which were highly correlated. There are three‐ to five‐month lags between the Amazon River discharge and 4°N latitude estimated from latitude‐time diagram derived from SeaWiFS measurements.