The oceanic circulation is characterized by the presence of vigorous coherent structures with spatial scales of 20-50km. These structures, named mesoscale eddies, are important for distributing the momentum, heat, salt, and biochemical tracers in the ocean.

These important processes, however, are notoriously difficult to study because of computational limitations, and sparsity of observations. Understanding the dynamic role of the eddy fluxes and representing them in non-eddy-resolving models are fundamental challenges in physical oceanography.

Role of eddy fluxes in the midlatitude ocean circulation is the subject of a collaborative project between UW and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (funded by the National Science Foundation).
 
 

Sea-surface temperature (SST) contours in a non-eddy-resolving (left panel) and an eddy-resolving (1/8 degree) models (right panel). Note that the non-eddy-resloving model cannot reproduce the full richness of the temperature structure.