Misplaced Pages

The Falkland Current is a cold water current that flows northward along the Atlantic coast of Patagonia as far north as the mouth of the Río de la Plata. This current results from the movement of water from the West Wind Drift as it rounds Cape Horn. It takes its name from the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas). This cold current mixes with the tropical Brazil Current in the Argentine Sea (see Brazil–Falkland Confluence), giving it its temperate climate.

The current is an equatorward flowing current that carries cold and relatively fresh subantarctic water. The Falkland Current is a branch of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. It transports between 60 and 90 Sverdrups 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 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.

See also

• Argentine Sea – Sea within the continental shelf off the Argentine mainland
• Ocean current – Directional mass flow of oceanic water
• Ocean gyre – Any large system of circulating ocean surface currents

References

1. Ecorregión Mar Argentino Archived November 5, 2013, at the Wayback Machine (in Spanish)
2. Vivier, F. and C. Provost, 1999b: Volume transport of the Falkland Current: Can the flow be monitored by TOPEX/POSEIDON ? Journal of Geophysical Research, 104, 21105-21122.
3. 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.

v t e Ocean currents and gyres
Currents	Arctic Ocean East Greenland North Icelandic Norwegian Transpolar Drift Stream Atlantic Ocean Angola Antilles Azores Baffin Island Benguela Brazil Canary Cape Horn Caribbean East Greenland East Iceland Falkland Florida Guinea Gulf Stream Irminger Labrador Lomonosov Loop North Atlantic North Brazil North Equatorial Norwegian Portugal South Atlantic South Equatorial West Greenland West Spitsbergen Indian Ocean Agulhas Agulhas Return East Madagascar Equatorial Counter Indian Monsoon Indonesian Throughflow Leeuwin Madagascar Mozambique North Madagascar Somali South Equatorial West Australian Pacific Ocean Alaska Aleutian California Cromwell Davidson East Australian East Korea Warm Equatorial Counter Humboldt Indonesian Throughflow Kamchatka Kuroshio Mindanao North Equatorial North Korea Cold North Pacific Oyashio South Equatorial Tasman Front Southern Ocean Antarctic Circumpolar Tasman Outflow
Gyres	Major gyres Indian Ocean Gyre North Atlantic Gyre South Atlantic Gyre North Pacific Gyre South Pacific Gyre Other gyres Beaufort Gyre Ross Gyre Weddell Gyre
Related	Atmospheric circulation Boundary current Coriolis force Ekman transport Marine debris Marine garbage patches Great Pacific Indian Ocean North Atlantic South Pacific Thermohaline circulation
Environment portal   Oceans portal

This article about a specific ocean current is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• Currents of the Atlantic Ocean
• Marine geography stubs