The Effect of the New England Seamounts on Gulf Stream Meandering as Observed from Satellite IR Imagery

Abstract

It is commonly held belief that meandering of the Gulf Stream increases dramatically downstream of the New England Seamount chain. In fact this appears not to be the case. The envelope of Gulf Stream northern edges derived from 30 months of satellite data remains constant from 65° to 58°W. Only the mean of the integrated path length normalized by the mean path length appears to increase downstream of the seamounts, but at very nearly the same rate as upstream of them.