scholarly journals A ÁFRICA DO SUL, O ATLÂNTICO SUL E A EQUAÇÃO IBAS-BRICS: O ESPAÇO TRANSATLÂNTICO EM TRANSIÇÃO

Author(s):  
Francis Kornegay

In a context of increasing South-South cooperation, the members of an important trilateral dialogue forum that represent the emergent powers – IBSA –, have been incorporated into another organization, BRICS. It resulted from an overlap of the Southern developing countries into the domain of the Euro-Asiatic great powers. Bearing in mind that both alliances are centered on the geostrategic space of the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic, South Africa´s South Atlantic strategic potential in tandem with Brazil is of extreme importance. It is possible to differentiate two steams in the transatlantic ties: the Afro-Latin and the trans-Mediterranean.  It is also relevant to place the role of Angola in the African continent as a possible influence in South Atlantic´s dynamics, given due importance to the Lusophone ties which are represented by CPLP.

2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (8) ◽  
pp. 1498-1511 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shenfu Dong ◽  
Silvia Garzoli ◽  
Molly Baringer

Abstract The interocean exchange of water from the South Atlantic with the Pacific and Indian Oceans is examined using the output from the ocean general circulation model for the Earth Simulator (OFES) during the period 1980–2006. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the role of the interocean exchanges in the variability of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and its associated meridional heat transport (MHT) in the South Atlantic. The meridional heat transport from OFES shows a similar response to AMOC variations to that derived from observations: a 1 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) increase in the AMOC strength would cause a 0.054 ± 0.003 PW increase in MHT at approximately 34°S. The main feature in the AMOC and MHT across 34°S is their increasing trends during the period 1980–93. Separating the transports into boundary currents and ocean interior regions indicates that the increase in transport comes from the ocean interior region, suggesting that it is important to monitor the ocean interior region to capture changes in the AMOC and MHT on decadal to longer time scales. The linear increase in the MHT from 1980 to 1993 is due to the increase in advective heat converged into the South Atlantic from the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Of the total increase in the heat convergence, about two-thirds is contributed by the Indian Ocean through the Agulhas Current system, suggesting that the warm-water route from the Indian Ocean plays a more important role in the northward-flowing water in the upper branch of the AMOC at 34°S during the study period.


Author(s):  
Isabel Hofmeyr

From the perspective of Anglophone literature, the South Atlantic has been something of a blank—in colonial maritime fiction, a prefatory space leading up to the Cape of Storms or on the journey home, a fast-forward space as the ship hurries to the metropole. This article suggests that one way to fill this blank is to focus on the subantarctic islands of the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. This insular world played a key role in the scramble for the Antarctic and reproduces the role of islands in imperial expansion elsewhere. The article examines two contrasting literary representations of these island worlds: H. Rider Haggard’s novel Mary of Marion Isle and Yvette Christiansë’s collection of poetry Imprendehora.


Author(s):  
Analúcia Danilevicz Pereira

The South Atlantic is becoming a strategic space in terms of development. The sea usage on both shores of the Ocean allows the exploitation and the use, as well as the conservation and the management of the natural resources of the seabed and the subsoil. The guarantee of economic rights, with the counterpart of duties and responsibilities of political nature, environmental and of public security, reflects the possibility of control over and area rich in natural resources and that, at the same time, becomes vulnerable to international pressures of all kinds. The research objectives are: a) analyze the geo-economic importance of the Ocean due the increasing exploitation of this space; b) analyze the new geopolitical reality, because the South Atlantic was converted into a strategic route of passage and development pole; and, c) analyze its geostrategic relevance by establishing a connection with Asia via Indian Ocean, highlighting the role of South Africa and IBSA.


Ocean Science ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Zharkov ◽  
D. Nof

Abstract. Recent proxies suggest that, at the end of the last glacial, there was a significant increase in the injection of Agulhas rings into the South Atlantic (SA). This brought about a dramatic increase in the salt-influx (from the Indian Ocean) into the SA helping re-start the then-collapsed meridional overturning cell (MOC), leading to the termination of the Younger Dryas (YD). Here, we propose a mechanism through which large variations in ring production take place. Using nonlinear analytical solutions for eddy shedding, we show that there are restricted possibilities for ring detachment when the coast is oriented in the north-south direction. We define a critical coastline angle below which there is rings shedding and above which there is almost no shedding. In the case of the Agulhas region, the particular shape of the African continent implies that rings can be produced only when the retroflection occurs beyond a specific latitude where the angle is critical. During glaciation, the wind stress curl (WSC) vanished at a latitude lower than that of the critical angle, which prohibited the retroflection from producing rings. When the latitude at which the WSC vanishes migrated poleward towards its present day position, the corresponding coastline angle decreased below the critical angle and allowed for a vigorous production of rings. Simple process-oriented numerical simulations (using the Bleck and Boudra model) are in satisfactory agreement with our results and enable us to affirm that, during the glacials, the behavior of the Agulhas Current (AC) was similar to that of the modern East Australian Current (EAC), for which the coastline slant is supercritical.


2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Preben Kaarsholm

AbstractThis article investigates the role of Sufi networks in keeping Durban's ‘Zanzibari’ community of African Muslims together and developing their response to social change and political developments from the 1950s to the post-apartheid period. It focuses on the importance of religion in giving meaning to notions of community, and discusses the importance of the Makua language in maintaining links with northern Mozambique and framing understandings of Islam. The transmission of ritual practices of the Rifaiyya, Qadiriyya, and Shadhiliyya Sufi brotherhoods is highlighted, as is the significance of Maputo as a node for such linkages. The article discusses change over time in notions of cosmopolitanism, diaspora, and belonging, and examines new types of interactions after 1994 between people identifying themselves as Amakhuwa in Durban and Mozambique.


Arabica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 409-435
Author(s):  
Meia Walravens

Abstract A growing body of literature on trade and cultural exchange between the Indian Ocean regions has already contributed significantly to our understanding of these processes and the role of language and writing within them. Yet, the question remains how Arabic correspondence played a part in communications between South Asian powers and the rulers in the Red Sea region. In order to begin filling this lacuna, this article studies epistolary writings from the Bahmani Sultanate (748/1347-934/1528) to the Mamluk Sultanate (648/1250-922/1517) during the second half of the ninth/fifteenth century. The contextualisation and discussion of three letters render insight both into the (up to now unstudied) issues at play in Bahmani-Mamluk relations and into the nature of these Arabic texts.


2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 3197-3211
Author(s):  
Kathrin Finke ◽  
Bernat Jiménez-Esteve ◽  
Andréa S. Taschetto ◽  
Caroline C. Ummenhofer ◽  
Karl Bumke ◽  
...  

Abstract South-Eastern Brazil experienced a devastating drought associated with significant agricultural losses in austral summer 2014. The drought was linked to the development of a quasi-stationary anticyclone in the South Atlantic in early 2014 that affected local precipitation patterns over South-East Brazil. Previous studies have suggested that the unusual blocking was triggered by tropical Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies and, more recently, by convection over the Indian Ocean related to the Madden–Julian Oscillation. Further investigation of the proposed teleconnections appears crucial for anticipating future economic impacts. In this study, we use numerical experiments with an idealized atmospheric general circulation model forced with the observed 2013/2014 SST anomalies in different ocean basins to understand the dominant mechanism that initiated the 2014 South Atlantic anticyclonic anomaly. We show that a forcing with global 2013/2014 SST anomalies enhances the chance for the occurrence of positive geopotential height anomalies in the South Atlantic. However, further sensitivity experiments with SST forcings in separate ocean basins suggest that neither the Indian Ocean nor tropical Pacific SST anomalies alone have contributed significantly to the anomalous atmospheric circulation that led to the 2014 South-East Brazil drought. The model study rather points to an important role of remote forcing from the South Pacific, local South Atlantic SSTs, and internal atmospheric variability in driving the persistent blocking over the South Atlantic.


2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (10) ◽  
pp. 1841-1860 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Donners ◽  
S. S. Drijfhout ◽  
W. Hazeleger

Abstract The transformation of water masses induced by air–sea fluxes in the South Atlantic Ocean is calculated with a global ocean model, Ocean Circulation and Climate Advanced Modeling (OCCAM), and has been compared with several observational datasets. Air–sea interaction supplies buoyancy to the ocean at almost all density levels. The uncertainty of the estimates of water mass transformations is at least 10 Sv (Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1), largely caused by the uncertainties in heat fluxes. Further analysis of the buoyancy budget of the mixed layer in the OCCAM model shows that diffusion extracts buoyancy from the water column at all densities. In agreement with observations, water mass formation of surface water by air–sea interaction is completely balanced by consumption from diffusion. There is a large interocean exchange with the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Intermediate water is imported from the Pacific, and light surface water is imported from the Indian Ocean. South Atlantic Central Water and denser water masses are exported to the Indian Ocean. The air–sea formation rate is only a qualitative estimate of the sum of subduction and interocean exchange. Subduction generates teleconnections between the South Atlantic and remote areas where these water masses reemerge in the mixed layer. Therefore, the subduction is analyzed with a Lagrangian trajectory analysis. Surface water obducts in the South Atlantic, while all other water masses experience net subduction. The subducted Antarctic Intermediate Water and Subantarctic Mode Water reemerge mainly in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current farther downstream. Lighter waters reemerge in the eastern tropical Atlantic. As a result, the extratropical South Atlantic has a strong link with the tropical Atlantic basin and only a weak direct link with the extratropical North Atlantic. The impact of the South Atlantic on the upper branch of the thermohaline circulation is indirect: water is significantly transformed by air–sea fluxes and mixing in the South Atlantic, but most of it reemerges and subducts again farther downstream.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Ana C. T. Sen ◽  
Gudrun Magnusdottir

AbstractThe influence of each phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) on the largescale circulation in South America is investigated using rainfall observations, fully-coupled, large-ensemble, historical simulations (LENS), and forced experiments using the coupled model’s atmospheric component. IOD events often occur when El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the largest source of interannual variability of precipitation in South America, is active. To distinguish from effects of ENSO, only cases during neutral ENSO conditions are analyzed in LENS and observations. During the positive IOD polarity, a perturbation in the localWalker circulation leads to increased convection over equatorial South America, resulting in wet anomalies in the Amazon basin. This signal is the opposite of what is expected during El Niño events. Tropical convection anomalies in the Indian Ocean also force an extratropical Rossby wave train that reaches subtropical South America. During positive IOD, the moisture flux from the Amazon to central and southeastern Brazil weakens, resulting in a drying of the area associated with the South Atlantic Convergence Zone. Meanwhile, the South Atlantic Subtropical High strengthens, contributing to a drying in southeastern Brazil. During negative IOD, the induced wave train from the Indian Ocean leads to increased moisture transport to the La Plata basin, leading to wet anomalies in the region.


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