Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2013. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 40 (2013): 3677–3681, doi:10.1002/grl.50736.
Description:
Mesoscale eddies dominate oceanic kinetic energy at
sub-inertial frequencies. Their three-dimensional structure
has, however, remained obscure, hindering better
understanding of eddy dynamics. Here by applying the
composite analysis of satellite altimetry and Argo float
data to the globe, we show that despite remarkable regional
differences in amplitude, extent and polarity, etc., mesoscale
eddies have a universal structure in normalized stretched
coordinates. Horizontally, the associated pressure anomaly is
well described by a function of the normalized radial
distance from the eddy center R(rn)=(1−rn2/2)• exp(−rn2/2),
whereas vertically it is sinusoidal in a stretched coordinate
zs = ƒ z0 (N/f )dz, where N and f are the buoyancy frequency
and the Coriolis parameter.
Description:
This research was supported
by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant
41276014 and the National Basic Research Priorities Program of China
through grant 2013CB430303.
Description:
2014-01-30
Keywords:
Geostrophic eddy
;
Three-dimensional structure
;
Universal
;
Ocean
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
application/pdf
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