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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

How oceanographers prevailed over pirates to study the Great Whirl

An eddy in an attack-plagued stretch of the Arabian Sea extends farther than expected.
Visualization of ocean surface currents off the east coast of Africa

An enormous ocean vortex that forms off the coast of Somalia every year is larger and longer-lived than thought. Credit: NASA/GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio

A giant vortex that forms in the waters off east Africa each year has been tracked in unprecedented detail. This ‘Great Whirl’ might play an important part in the start of India’s southwest monsoon, which drenches the subcontinent in rain but can be difficult to predict.

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Nature 569, 310-311 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01460-8

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