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Sahara Coastal - Environment

The Moroccan system is one of the major upwelling ecosystems. The basic coastal upwelling process is well understood: equatorward trade winds blow along the North African coast and drive offshore transport of surface waters and subsequent upwelling of cold nutrient rich waters in the coastal area. Winds are upwelling favourable for almost all the year between 20 and 25°N, while at northern latitudes upwelling occurs mostly during summer time, and south of Cape Blanc during the winter-spring months. The system varies on different scales from the event or synoptic scale of a few days, through seasonal, to inter-decadal and long term. Variability of upwelling occurs on decadal scales, in association with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), but more than 70 per cent of the variance is related to synoptic scale changes (<30 days) in wind forcing (Arístegui et al., 2005).
Offshore off Cap Blanc, there is a convergence zone where the equatorward Canary Current and the northward extension of the North Equatorial Counter Current lock the subtropical and tropical gyres and form a front that separates the northern cold and salty waters from the tropical warm and fresh waters.