Whirlpool the Size of Colorado Now Tracked From Space, Study Says

Colorado-Sized Whirlpool Tracked From Space

A new method for tracking the Great Whirl, a massive whirlpool the size of Colorado that forms each year off the coast of East Africa, has been discovered and may help forecasters predict how wet a monsoon season will be in India and neighboring countries, a new study says.

Twenty-three years of satellite data showed researchers that the whirlpool that returns every year off the Horn of Africa in the Indian Ocean is larger and longer than previously thought, according to the study published Monday in Geophysical Research Letters.

During its peak, the whirlpool reaches an area of 106,000 square miles and can grow to more than 300 miles wide, lasting about 200 days from spring through the fall. In comparison, Colorado covers an area of 104,000 square miles.

According to study, the whirlpool is also connected to the monsoon that not only fuels India's $2 trillion agricultural economy, but also can bring deadly flooding to parts of India, Bangladesh and neighboring countries.

The whirlpool's peak typically runs from June to September, which coincides with India's monsoon season.

One positive outcome of this new method of whirl tracking is that it might help discern a pattern in the Great Whirl's formation, which might in turn help forecasters better predict when India will have a very dry or very wet monsoon season.

"If we're about to connect these two, we might have an advantage in predicting the strength of the monsoon, which has huge socioeconomic impacts," lead author Bryce Melzer, a satellite oceanographer at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, said in a press release.

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To make matters even more complicated, the mere size of the massive whirlpool makes it difficult determine its boundaries, how it varies from year-to-year or exactly when it forms and disappears.

Now, using satellite data, the researchers discovered that there is a lot of variability in its size and when the whirlpool forms and dissipates.

Whirlpools form all over the world, typically when opposing currents meet. The formation of the Great Whirl is a complicated process with many variables but is influenced by alongshore southwesterly winds combined with the slanted angle of the coastline, according to Science Direct.

The Great Whirl has long been the stuff of legend among sailors and was first described in 1866 by geographer Alexander Findlay in his navigational directory for the Indian Ocean, according to the press release.

Lieutenant Taylor of the British Royal Navy told Findlay of a "great whirl of current" circulating clockwise at about the same latitude as Xaafuun, Somalia. "A very heavy confused sea is created by this whirl," Findlay wrote.

It later was dubbed the Great Whirl and sailors have long steered clear of the area when the ocean begins to swirl sometime in April, wary of its strong waves and currents.

The researchers note that they have not yet found a pattern that could predict the India monsoon, but hope that will become a reality in the future with continuing analysis.