Occurrence and characteristics of mesoscale eddies in the tropical  northeastern Atlantic Ocean

Schütte, Florian; Brandt, Peter; Karstensen, Johannes

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-12-663-2016

Articles | Volume 12, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-12-663-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-12-663-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 3

Research article

|

13 May 2016

Research article |

| 13 May 2016

Occurrence and characteristics of mesoscale eddies in the tropical northeastern Atlantic Ocean

Florian Schütte, Peter Brandt, and Johannes Karstensen

Data sets

MSLA - H: Maps of Sea Level Anomalies: Height AVISO http://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/en/data/products/sea-surface-height-products/global/msla-h.html

Microwave OI SST Product Description REMSS http://www.remss.com/measurements/sea-surface-temperature/oisst-description

French ground segment for the SMOS Level 3 and 4 data CATDS http://catds.ifremer.fr/Products/Available-products-from-CEC-OS/Locean-v2013

NOC Surface Flux Dataset NOC http://noc.ac.uk/science-technology/earth-ocean-system/atmosphere-ocean/noc-surface-flux-dataset

Argo float data ARGO http://www.argodatamgt.org/Access-to-data/Argo-data-selection

Argo user’s manual V3.2 T. Carval, R. Keeley, Y. Takatsuki, T. Yoshida, C. Schmid, R. Goldsmith, A. Wong, A. Thresher, A. Tran, S. Loch, and R. Mccreadie https://doi.org/10.13155/29825

The assembled shipboard measurements and the part of the CVOO mooring data PANGEA https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.860251

Short summary

We want to examine the characteristics of mesoscale eddies in the tropical northeastern Atlantic. They serve as transport agents, exporting water from the coast into the open ocean. Traditionally eddies are categorized with respect to their rotation: cyclonic and anticyclonic. But we could identify, with a combination of different satellite products, a third type called "anticyclonic mode-water eddy" transporting much larger anomalies. We propose a distinction into three classes for further studies.