Danilo A. Silva

I am a Brazilian oceanographer, working at the Coastal Hydrodynamics Group at the University of São Paulo Oceanographic Institute and interested in continental shelf processes and their interaction with open ocean. I’m on the third year of my PhD, where I use a combination of numerical simulations with observational data analysis to study salty and warm subsurface intrusions in the South Brazil Bight, which can be an important mechanism to insert head and mass into the shelf.

I received my B.S. in oceanography and my M.Sc. in physical oceanography both from the University of São Paulo (2016 and 2019, respectively). As an undergraduate I worked with Dr. Marcelo Dottori and Belmiro Mendes Castro to investigate hypothetical scenarios of nuclear leakage in the Angra dos Reis (RJ, Brazil) power plant. As a graduate student, my work was to explore how atmospheric blocking events affect the shelf circulation and thermodynamics, since these events are known to increase the incoming shortwave radiation and block synoptic wind patterns. Check our paper to know more.

In addition to my work as a researcher, I am trying to bring state-of-the-art tools from the data science world into the lab, to become the researcher’s life easier. For instance, I am working with Docker containerization to encapsulate the Regional Ocean Model System (ROMS) and to prevent every new researcher from our group to go through the installation process.

Outside academia, I provide freelance data analyst services for the renewable energy sector. Among the services, I work with meteo-oceanographic information (observed and modeled), global reanalysis, develop pipelines to operationalize workflows (using Apache Airflow), like download, pre and postprocessing of satelite products and global datasets.

Research Interests

Cross-shelf exchanges
Lagrangian drifters
Coastal ocean modeling
Low-budget instrumentation

Education

PhD. in Physical Oceanography, University of São Paulo
(Jun, 2023)
MSc. in Physical Oceanography, University of São Paulo
(Mar, 2019)
BSc. in Oceanography, University of São Paulo
(Dec, 2026)

selected publications

An inventory of salty and warm subsurface intrusions in the South Brazil Bight

Silva, Danilo A., Sasaki, Dalton Kei, Dottori, Marcelo, da Silveira, Ilson Carlos Almeida, Belo, Wellington Ceccopieri, and Martins, Renato Parkinson

Continental Shelf Research 2023

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Subsurface intrusions of salty and warm waters onto the shelf can potentially impact the thermodynamics and biogeochemistry of these relatively shallow water environments. Such thermohaline intrusions are usually associated with double diffusive processes and can enhance the vertical and lateral fluxes. In this work, we characterized subsurface intrusions of Tropical Waters (TW) at the South Brazil Bight (SBB) - a mid-latitude continental shelf, which were detected based on salinity vertical profiles from a historical dataset. We found the intrusions tend to follow the pycnocline and are relatively common year-round, occurring at 27% of the dataset, with a maximum salinity highly correlated with the maximum stratification. Intrusions have different along-shelf characteristics, varying with the shelf width and depth. North of São Sebastião Island (SSI) – at the central portion of the SBB –, intrusions were thicker, saltier, and shallower than the ones found at the south of SSI. These differences could be related to the variations of the Coastal Water (CW) and South Atlantic Central Water (SACW) volume along the shelf and throughout the year. We found that intrusions’ thickness presents an inverse correlation with stratification, resulting in thinner intrusions in more stratified environments. This inverse correlation suggests double-diffusively driven intrusions. We apply the Turner Angle method to investigate whether the environment is susceptible to double diffusive processes. This analysis suggests that thermohaline intrusions in the SBB might not be primarily double diffusive. However, the dominance of different double diffusion processes - diffusive convection (salt fingering) at the upper (lower) layer - suggests that these processes influence intrusion growth, steady-state, and erosion. Nonetheless, the mechanism responsible for the initial density perturbation remains unknown and further studies are needed to explore the relationship between the Brazil Current dynamics and thermohaline warm and salty subsurface intrusions.
Seascape genetics in a polychaete worm: Disentangling the roles of a biogeographic barrier and environmental factors

Mendes, Cecili B., Cortez, Thainá, Santos, Cinthya S. G., Sobral-Souza, Thadeu, Santos, Arian Dielactaquiz, Sasaki, Dalton Kei, Silva, Danilo A., Dottori, Marcelo, and Andrade, Sónia C. S.

Journal of Biogeography 2022

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The atmospheric blocking influence over the South Brazil Bight during the 2013–2014 summer

Silva, Danilo A., and Dottori, Marcelo

Regional Studies in Marine Science 2021

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The 2013–2014 summer in the Southeast Brazil region set records for negative precipitation anomalies and the highest sea surface temperatures. Such event was attributed to the anomalous presence of atmospheric blocking, which prevented the propagation of a cold front towards the Equator and the establishment of the South Atlantic Convergence Zone, two phenomena that regulate the precipitation regime in this area. These blocking episodes are relatively important to the climate in mid-latitudes, but the feedback of the coastal ocean is still poorly understood under these anomalous conditions. This paper investigates, from a numerical perspective, the impacts on the thermohaline properties and circulation in the South Brazil Bight (SBB). We found that enhanced shortwave radiation leads to intense surface heating and that the presence of northeasterly winds strengthens the coastal upwelling nearby Cabo Frio. The South Atlantic Coastal Waters, transported into the SBB, regulate the extreme heating in the northern half of the domain, while, in the southern half, the absence of cold waters leads to the development of a warm-water pool. The final thermohaline structure induced an enlargement and intensification of the northwestward currents south of São Sebastião Island. Between Ubatuba and Cabo Frio, in the northern half, the northeasterly winds developed an intense surface advection towards offshore, and in the northern region, compensated by an opposite advection, towards the coast. We conclude that the coastal ocean feedback could present extreme anomalous conditions during atmospheric blocking events, leading to impacts upon the thermodynamical properties. Further studies are needed to understand the impacts of these events on biogeochemical properties.