Figure 3.

Analysis of oceanographic and meteorological data for the North Atlantic to trace surface movements around northern Europe/the Bay of Biscay (orange circle) and the Cape Verde Islands (red circle). (a) Mean drift time in each 0.5° by 0.5° pixel from the full particle hindcast ensemble. Pixels are coloured to reflect the first (dark blue), second (light blue) and third year of drift (green) and the paths of a sample of 35 particle hindcast trajectories are plotted. (b) Trajectories of 53 Lagrangian drifter buoys passing within 100 km off the coast of the Cape Verde Islands. Pixels are coded as in (a) to reflect mean year of drift. (c) Tracks of 11 Atlantic basin major storms that originated near Cape Verde Islands during our studied period. These storms provided a more direct route from Cape Verde Islands to the northeast Atlantic than the prevailing ocean currents. Each colour represents a different year. Further information about each storm numbered 1–11 is in the electronic supplementary material, table S7.