News Archive

• Sep 2018: SAMOC VII Workshop: The SAMOC Executive Committee is planning the next SAMOC Workshop. It will be held back-to-back with the IAPSO Joint Assembly meeting (8-18 July 2019). Dates are still to be determined. Please contact Edmo Campos for additional information.
• Jan 2018: Postdoctoral Opportunity: The SAMBAR project is looking for a bright postdoctoral research to investigate impacts of global changes on the ocean and the feedback of changes in the South Atlantic Circulation on the Regional Climate and on the stability of the meridional overturning circulation (MOC). The successful candidate will participate in cruises to carry out ocean observations and analyze ocean data and model outputs to study ocean physical processes, such as boundary currents, wind-driven circulation, ocean-atmosphere interactions and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) variability. For more details, contact Olga Sato (olga.sato "at" usp.br). Full job advertisement can be found here.
• Jan 2018: The recently funded Brazilian project, SAMBAR, was featured in the recent POGO newsletter article by Edmo Campos and the SAMOC Science Team (click here to see newsletter, article on page 10).
• Dec 2017: The 2018 International AMOC Science Meeting will be held in Coconut Grove, Florida on July 24-27, 2018. Scientists will join together to exchange ideas and develop a better understanding of AMOC and its influence on weather, climate, and ecosystems. The meeting with bring together members of the international climate and ocean science communities, ranging from paleo perspectives to future outlooks, the meeting will focus on a few anticipated themes but the agenda is open to all topics related to the AMOC. Abstracts are due February 28, 2018. For more information, go to the meeting webpage.
• Nov 2017: Funding news! The Brazilian partners in the SAMBA array have received another 5 years of funding and ship time from FAPESP in support of the Brazilian SAMBAR array on the western boundary along 34.5S (lead PIs: Edmo Campos, Olga Sato). A new CPIES site will be added to improve the sampling of the Brazil Current, and two new moorings will be added (with POPEYES data pods) to monitor interior transports all the way to the mid-Atlantic ridge. See SAMBA Executive Summary here.
• Nov 2017: Funding news! The South African partners in the SAMBA array have received another 3 years of funding and ship time in support of the South African tall mooring array on the eastern boundary along 34.5S (lead PI: Isabelle Ansorge).
• Nov 2017: Student opportunity: PhD student opportunity starting in the 2018/2019 academic year to work at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton, University of Southampton in the UK. The project will study the evolution of deep water masses as they upwell along the path of the ACC (more details about this student opportunity can be found here).
• Nov 2017: The AMOS-ICSHMO Conference will be held in Sydney, Australia, 5-9 February 2018. If you are studying climate/atmospheric processes or ocean circulation in the South Atlantic, please consider attending the meeting and participating in two SAMOC-related sessions entitled "South Atlantic Ocean: Circulation, Processes, Observations, and Modelling" and "South American cliamte variability, change and predictability". For more information about the conference go to the conference webpage.
• Oct 2017: The 2018 Ocean Sciences meeting will be held on February 11-16, 2018 in Portland, Oregon. If you are attending the Ocean Sciences meeting, please consider participating in the SAMOC-related poster (PL44A, Thursday 4pm-6pm, Poster Hall) and oral (PL53A, Friday 2pm-4pm, A107-109) sessions on "Advances in our understanding of the meridional overturning circulation in the South Atlantic." Also, there are several sessions on "AMOC: Modeling and Observations" on Tuesday and Wednesday. For more information about the meeting, please visit the conference webpage.
• Oct 2017: Check out the wonderful blog by Melissa Miller and others during the recent SOCCOM cruise aboard the SA Agulhas II (South Africa). During the cruise they deployed six BGC-Argo (SOCCOM) floats. The SOCCOM at Sea blog can be found here.
• Sep 2017: The SAMOC community held a successful workshop September 4, 2017 in Cape Town, South Africa, following the IAPSO Joint Assembly meeting. The meeting report will be available in November here.
• Aug 2017: A new POGO SAMOC Working Group Fact Sheet was put together by Edmo Campos and explains the importance of SAMOC. The fact sheet can be found here.
• Jul 2017: A SAMOC session has been approved for the Ocean Sciences meeting which will be held on February 11-16, 2018 in Portland, Oregon. The session is entitled PL001: Advances in our understanding of the meridional overturning circulation in the South Atlantic. Abstract submissions are now open and close on September 6th. Please submit your abstracts to the SAMOC session and spread the word. Here is the link to submit abstracts to the meeting.
• Jun 2017: SAMOC community workshop to be held September 4, 2017 in Cape Town, South Africa. The SAMOC community workshop will follow the IAPSO Joint Assembly, which will be held in Cape Town 28th August to 1st September. The goal of the SAMOC workshop is to discuss and update everyone on all current SAMOC activities and logistics. The one-day workshop will take place at the University of Cape Town in the Oceanography Department. Please email Isabelle Ansorge and confirm that you plan to attend the workshop. An agenda for the meeting will be sent out closer to the time as well as directions to the venue.
• Feb 2017: The RV MARIA S. MERIAN successfully completed the first trans-basin full-depth oceanographic section linking the southern tip of Africa to the South American continent arriving in Montevideo, Uruguay on February 4, 2017. For more details about the cruise, click here.
  Salinity section obtained during the first half of the MSM-60 cruise.
  
  
• Feb 2017: Following on from the IAPSO Joint Assembly, which will be held in Cape Town 28th August to 1st September (meeting website), there will be a SAMOC community workshop to discuss and update everyone on all current SAMOC activities and logistics. The workshop is planned for a day at the University of Cape Town. It will be held in the seminar room in the Oceanography Department, upper campus on the Monday 4th September (9.30-5pm). More details soon.
• Feb 2017: Please consider attending the JpGU AGU Joint meeting which will be held in Makuhari Messe, Chiba, Japan (May 20-25). There will be a session on "Climate variations in the Atlantic Ocean and their representation in climate models". Abstracts are due by February 16th. Click here for the meeting website.
• Jan 2017: The RV MARIA S. MERIAN left Cape Town, South Africa, on January 4, 2017 to undertake the first full-depth oceanographic section linking the southern tip of Africa to the South American continent with on board a team of more than 20 scientists from eight countries. For more details, click here. (Related article in Hydro International).
• Nov 2016: SAMOC was featured in Issue 26 (page 9) of the Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO) newsletter.
• Aug 2016: Several SAMOC-related postdoctoral positions at the University of Miami are now open. Successful candidates will work with researchers in the Physical Oceanography Division (PhOD) of NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) in Miami, Florida. These open postdoctoral positions will focus on 1) Argo analysis of oceanic variability, 2) Atlantic MOC observations, 3) South Atlantic MOC variability, 4) southward returning pathways of the AMOC, and 5) inter-ocean exchanges in the South Atlantic and their link to global monsoons. More details about these postdoctoral positions can be found at the bottom of the NOAA/AOML/PhOD webpage. Additionally, these postdoctoral opportunities can be found by searching on the University of Miami employment webpage for the following position numbers (P100015908, P100015909, P100015913, P100015914).
• Jun 2016: A SAMOC Science Team page was added to the SAMOC International webpage.
• Apr 2016: Please click here to see the report from the Feb 21, 2016 SAMOC VI workshop in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
• Mar 2016: A recent paper published in the Journal of Climate by Hosmay Lopez, Shenfu Dong, Sang-Ki Lee, and Gustavo Goni provides a physical mechanism on how low frequency variability of the South Atlantic Meridional Heat Transport (SAMHT) associated with the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) may influence decadal variability of atmospheric circulation and monsoons. This is the first attempt to link the South Atlantic Overturning Circulation variability to weather and climate. For more details, visit this link.
• Mar 2016: Sabrina Speich is conducting a cross-basin, lower atmosphere/upper ocean physical and biogeochemical survey aboard the Meteor, a German research vessel, in the South Atlantic. The South Atlantic is a key region in the context of the global thermohaline circulation where exchange between Indian, Southern, Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans takes place. The survey during M124 aims to: estimate the upper ocean meridional heat and freshwater transport along approximately 30S, the physical/biogeochemical characteristics of Agulhas Rings, transporting Indian Ocean Water far into the South Atlantic; aerosols, surface radiation balance, and precipitation measurements; the surface water carbonate system parameters (pCO2). The expedition will also be used for training purposes, in particular students from South Atlantic bordering countries will participate and will use the data to perform their own investigations related to the scientific objectives of the cruise. For more details about this cruise, please visit the cruise webpage and the blog by cruise participants.
• Mar 2016: At the SAMOC logistics meeting, the Christopher Meinen and Isabelle Ansorge were added to the Executive Committee (EC). Alberto Piola is the new Chair of the EC, and Sabrina Speich is the new Co-Chair. Silvia Garzoli will stay on the EC as an Emeritus member.
• Mar 2016: An Upcoming Cruises page was added to the SAMOC International webpage.
• Mar 2016: Folks tweeting about SAMOC news, cruises, or publications, should considering using the #SouthAtlanticMOC hastag.
• Feb 2016: There will be a SAMOC session entitled "Observing and Modeling the Meridional Overturning Circulation in the South Atlantic: Causes of variability and impacts on climate, weather, and ecosystems" at the 21-26 Feb 2016 Ocean Sciences Meeting in New Orleans, LA (Monday oral session, Monday poster session).
• Feb 2016: There will be a SAMOC logistics meeting at the 21-26 Feb 2016 Ocean Sciences Meeting in New Orleans, LA on Sunday, Feb 21st.
  Date/time: Sunday 2/21 9am-6pm (Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Room 217-219)
• Dec 2015: 4 SAMBA-SA "tall moorings" were successfully serviced and hydrographic measurements were obtained during a December 2015 cruise aboard the RS Algoa.
• Nov 2015: SAM PIES "B" site was turned around and SAMOC-BR ADCP and BPR were successfully recovered during a November 2015 cruise aboard the R/V Alpha Delphini.
• Jul 1, 2015: Post-doctoral Position in Oceanography with the South African National Antarctic Programme (SANAP) is available from January 2016 in the Department of Oceanography, at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
• Jul 1, 2015: There will be a SAMOC session entitled "Observing and Modeling the Meridional Overturning Circulation in the South Atlantic: Causes of variability and impacts on climate, weather, and ecosystems" at the 21-26 Feb 2016 Ocean Sciences Meeting in New Orleans, LA (see abstract).
• Dec 14, 2014: The South Africans completed hydrographic cruise and deployed 7 French CPIES along Goodhope transect.
• Dec 5, 2014: South Atlantic Workshop and SAMOC V Meeting held in Buenos Aires, Argentina from Dec 1-5, 2014.
• Nov 25, 2014: The joint UK Rapid/US AMOC International Science Meeting will be held Jul 21-24, 2015 in Bristol, UK. Meeting details can be found here.
• Oct 16, 2014: The Argentine research vessel Puerto Deseado just completed the ninth joint USA-Argentina-Brazil SAMOC research cruise.
• Sep 29, 2014: The South Africans completed cruise aboard the RS Algoa to deployment four tall South African SAMBA moorings.
• Jul 17, 2014: The webpage for the workshop on "South Atlantic circulation variability and change: integrating models and observations" is now available. The workshop will take place on Dec 1-5, 2014 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Jul 17, 2014: The 2014 US AMOC Science Team Meeting will take place on Sep 9-11, 2014 in Seattle, Washington.
• Apr 29, 2014: A recent paper by Meinen et al. (2013) on the first continuous in time observations of AMOC from the South Atlantic at 34.5S was highlighted in the Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union Volume 95, Number 17, 29 April 2014 and was a JGR Editor's Highlight.
• Apr 3, 2014: SAMOC Workshop planned for week of Dec 1-5, 2014 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Please mark your calendars. Further details will be posted soon.
• Feb 11, 2014: Efforts to expand the basin-wide SAMOC array (SAMBA) on both sides of the Atlantic were recently featured in a EOS news article.
• Jan 16, 2014: First data return from the pop-up system SYREDOMY deployed on the eastern boundary.
• Dec 7-17, 2013: SAMOC-BR2 cruise was completed on Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP) R/V Alpha-Delphini.
• Dec 17, 2013: GEOMAR, Helmholtz-Zentrum fur Ozeanforschung Kiel deployed an array of current meters along the western boundary near 11S in July 2013 to study variations of the MOC in the tropical Atlantic. The first mooring recovery and redeployment will be in spring 2014. The array is planned to be deployed for 4 to 5 years.
• Sep 9, 2013: Eight French CPIES and two bottom ADCP moorings have been deployed off the steep South African continental shelf and across the deep abyssal plain to 0E during a cruise on the South African Agulhas II.
• Aug 21, 2013: Graduate student and postdoctoral fellow project page added to the SAMOC website.
• Jun 11, 2013: NOAA funded PIs Renellys Perez and Silvia Garzoli (CIMAS/UM, NOAA/AOML), and Ricardo Matano (OSU/CEOAS) to investigate SAMOC water mass pathways and natural modes of variability using high-resolution coupled climate and ocean-only simulations and available in situ and satellite observations, in collaboration with Rym Msadek (UCAR, NOAA/GFDL).
• May 7, 2013: SAMOC was recently featured in a Nature news article about three field programs that seek to track changes in the Atlantic overturning circulation currents.
• Mar 30, 2013: There are several upcoming meetings with sessions of interest to the SAMOC community: AGU meeting of the Americas (Mexico, May 14-17), US AMOC/UK RAPID International Science Meeting (USA, Jul 16-19), and IAPSO meeting (Sweden, Jul 22-26).
• Jan 29-31, 2013: International workshop to discuss logistics and planning for the trans-basin SAMBA array.
• Dec 15, 2012: The 8th SAM cruise was completed, as well as the 1st SAMOC-BR cruise on board the Brazilian Alpha-Crucis. During this cruise, three Brazilian CPIES were deployed.
• Nov 6, 2012: CNPq (the Brazilian NSF) has agreed to continue funding the MOVAR-AX97 XBT line from Rio de Janeiro to Trindade Island for another 3 years (lead-PI: Mauricio Mata, Instituto de Oceanografia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande - FURG).
• Oct 23, 2012: NASA funded PIs Gustavo Goni (NOAA/AOML) and Shenfu Dong (CIMAS/UM, NOAA/AOML) to investigate the meridional variability (at seasonal to interannual time scales) of the SAMOC using altimetry observations; with a comparison/validation component using Argo, XBT, model-derived estimates.
• Aug 16, 2012: Dinner scheduled for all SAMOC partners attending the US AMOC meeting in Boulder, CO
• Jul 13, 2012: The 7th SAM cruise was completed on board R/V Puerto Deseado (CONICET, Argentina).
• Jun 22, 2012: GEOMAR, Helmholtz-Zentrum fur Ozeanforschung Kiel will be deploying an array of current meters along the western boundary near 11S in 2013 to study decadal variations of the MOC in the tropical Atlantic.
• May 14, 2012: SAMOC formally endorsed by the International CLIVAR Scientific Steering Group
• May 3, 2012: Registration for 2012 US AMOC meeting in Boulder, Colorado is open until May 18, 2012 (registration link)
• Mar 2, 2012: South Africa-SANAP awarded funds for equipment and ship time to support eastern boundary current array.
• Nov 29, 2011: Brazil-FACEPE/FAPESP and France-ANR awarded funds to augment the western and eastern boundary current arrays, respectively. Ship time also provided to support western boundary current array.
• Oct 24, 2011 - Dec 2, 2011: CO2 - Subtropical Atlantic Ocean cruise conducted by Brazil along 35S.
• Sep 27-29, 2011: SAMOC IV workshop held in Simons Town, South Africa.