Within the context of the German CLIVAR program, an observational program in the western tropical Atlantic with shipboard sections, profiling floats and a moored array aims at studying the role of the shallow thermohaline subtropical cell (STC) in tropical-subtropical interactions and the cold water transports underneath. From 6 repeated shipboard profiling sections off Brazil near 5¿S a northward warm water transport above 1100 m of 25.0 ¿ 4.4 Sv is determined, of which 13.4 ¿ 2.7 Sv occur in the thermocline layer supplying the Equatorial Undercurrent. Trajectories of 15 profiling floats released near the western boundary are presented that drift at shallow levels (200 m and 400 m) and delineate the different STC branches. For the southward flow of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) a section-mean transport of -31.7 ¿ 9.2 Sv was determined at 5¿S. However, different from the steady NADW flow observed earlier along the topography north of the equator, the NADW currents at 5--10¿S are much more variable with long periods of northward counterflow along the topography.