CLIMATE AND EARTH
SYSTEM SCIENCES
Photo: UHH/Denstorf
13 October 2020
Photo: UHH/CEN
We are proud to announce the successful disputation of our SICSS member Mihael Machado de Souza.
His dissertation"Effects of Climate Change on the Physical Conditions of the Brazilian Shelf" was supervised by PD. Dr. Thomas Pohlmann and Dr. Moritz Mathis.
The main goal of Mihael's doctorate research was to investigate the response of the Brazilian shelf waters to a strong warming scenario during the 21st century. This was carried out by downscaling the outputs of the MPI-ESM-MR to the South Atlantic Ocean under the RCP8.5 emissions pathway, using the HAMSOM model. In the face of a warming planet, he identified a persistent poleward migration of the Brazil-Malvinas Confluence in response to a weakening of the Malvinas Current flow. This weakening, in turn, was in response to a readjustment of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current transport over the Southern Ocean due to a poleward migration of the westerlies. As to the response along the Brazilian shelf, he found increased water column stratification and a weakening of vertical flows associated with the regional upwelling of South Atlantic Central Water, an important source of nutrients modulating the shelf's productivity. This was specially effective along southeastern and south Brazil, where these effects were compounded by the surface heating associated with climate change. Overall, these results highlight that the southern Brazilian shelf, and specially the South Brazil Bight, are more vulnerable to the threat of climate change than the central and northern Brazilian waters.
Mihael was a member of the Institute of Oceanography at the Universität Hamburg.