The Falkland Current is a cold water current that flows northward along the Atlantic coast of

Patagonia Patagonia () is a geographical region that includes parts of Argentina and Chile at the southern end of South America. The region includes the southern section of the Andes mountain chain with lakes, fjords, temperate rainforests, and glaciers ...

as far north as the mouth of the

Río de la Plata The Río de la Plata (; ), also called the River Plate or La Plata River in English, is the estuary formed by the confluence of the Uruguay River and the Paraná River at Punta Gorda, Colonia, Punta Gorda. It empties into the Atlantic Ocean and ...

. This current results from the movement of water from the West Wind Drift as it rounds

Cape Horn Cape Horn (, ) is the southernmost headland of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago of southern Chile, and is located on the small Hornos Island. Although not the most southerly point of South America (which is Águila Islet), Cape Horn marks the nor ...

. It takes its name from the

Falkland Islands The Falkland Islands (; ), commonly referred to as The Falklands, is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and from Cape Dub ...

(). This cold current mixes with the tropical

Brazil Current The Brazil Current is a warm water current that flows south along the Brazilian south coast to the mouth of the Río de la Plata. Description This current is caused by diversion of a portion of the Atlantic South Equatorial Current from where ...

in the

Argentine Sea The Argentine Sea () is a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean adjacent to the southern tip of South America. It ranges from the mouth of the estuary of the Río de la Plata in the north (35th parallel south) to the Isla de los Estados in the south, ...

(see

Brazil–Falkland Confluence The Brazil–Falkland Confluence Zone (also called the Brazil–Falklands Confluence Zone or the Brazil–Malvinas Confluence Zone) is a very energetic region of water just off the coast of Argentina and Uruguay where the warm poleward flowing Brazi ...

), giving it its temperate climate.Ecorregión Mar Argentino
The current is an equatorward flowing current that carries cold and relatively fresh

subantarctic The sub-Antarctic zone is a physiographic region in the Southern Hemisphere, located immediately north of the Antarctic region. This translates roughly to a latitude of between 46th parallel south, 46° and 60th parallel south, 60° south of t ...

water. The Falkland Current is a branch of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. It transports between 60 and 90

Sverdrup In oceanography, the sverdrup (symbol: Sv) is a non- SI metric unit of volumetric flow rate, with equal to . It is equivalent to the SI derived unit cubic hectometer per second (symbol: hm3/s or hm3⋅s−1): is equal to . It is used almost ...

s of water with speeds ranging from a half a meter to a meter per second. Hydrographic data in this area is very scarce and thus various hydrographic variables have a great deal of error. The Falkland Current is not a

surface current An ocean current is a continuous, directed movement of seawater generated by a number of forces acting upon the water, including wind, the Coriolis effect, breaking waves, cabbeling, and temperature and salinity differences. Depth contours, ...

like the Brazil Current but it extends all the way to the sea-floor. Typical temperatures for the current are around 6 °C, with a salinity of 33.5–34.5 psu.Vigan, X., C. Provost, and G. Podesta, 2000: Sea surface velocities from sea surface temperature image sequences 2. Application to the Brazil-Malvinas Confluence area. Journal of Geophysical Research, 105, 19515-19534.

References

Currents of the Atlantic Ocean {{Marine-current-stub

See also

References