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Dynamics of Eddies in the Ocean

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Lagrangian Oceanography

Part of the book series: Physics of Earth and Space Environments ((EARTH))

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Abstract

In this chapter we apply Lagrangian methods to study mesoscale eddies, rotating coherent features which exist almost everywhere in the ocean. In the first part we focus on a mesoscale anticyclonic eddy that has been sampled in the R/V Professor Gagarinskiy cruise (June–July 2012) in the area to the east off the Kuril Islands in the North Western subarctic Pacific. Lagrangian approach is applied to study formation, structure, and evolution of this feature called the eddy A and of its parent eddy B using a simulation with synthetic tracers advected by the AVISO velocity field. In the second part the output from an eddy-resolved multilayered circulation model is used to analyze the vertical structure of simulated deep-sea eddies in the Japan Sea constrained by a bottom topography. We focus on Lagrangian analysis of ACEs, generated in the model in a typical year approximately at the place of the mooring and the hydrographic sections, where such features have been regularly observed. Using a quasi-3D computation of the FTLEs and displacements for a large number of synthetic tracers in each depth layer, we show that the simulated feature evolves from the eddy, that does not reach the surface in summer, into the feature reaching the surface in fall.

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List of Internet Resources

  1. International Argo Program Homepage. http://www.argo.net/

  2. WHOI Argo Atlas & Database. http://argoweb.whoi.edu/

  3. Archiving, Validation and Interpretation of Satellite Oceanographic (AVISO). http://www.aviso.altimetry.fr

  4. The Global Drifter Program. http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/dac

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pacific Oceanological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Laboratory of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems, Vladivostok, Russia

    Sergey V. Prants, Michael Yu. Uleysky & Maxim V. Budyansky

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  1. Sergey V. Prants
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  2. Michael Yu. Uleysky
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  3. Maxim V. Budyansky
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Prants, S.V., Uleysky, M.Y., Budyansky, M.V. (2017). Dynamics of Eddies in the Ocean. In: Lagrangian Oceanography. Physics of Earth and Space Environments. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53022-2_6

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