Motivated by satellite altimeter observations of enhanced sea level variability near steep topographic slopes in the Southern Ocean, effects of topography on the spatial distribution of mesoscale eddies and on eddy–mean flow interaction are investigated using a two-layer, wind-forced, quasigeostrophic channel model. The principal topography, a zonal ridge with a...
Global 1° × 1° climatologies of the first baroclinic gravity-wave phase speed c¹ and the Rossby radius of deformation λ1 are computed from climatological average temperature and salinity profiles. These new atlases are compared with previously published 5° × 5° coarse resolution maps of λ₁ for the Northern Hemisphere and...
A formalism recently developed for determining the effects of sampling errors on objectively smoothed fields constructed from an irregularly sampled dataset is applied to investigate the relative merits of single and multiple satellite altimeter missions. For small smoothing parameters, the expected squared error of smoothed fields of sea surface height...
Seasat scatterometer and altimeter data are analyzed to investigate time-dependent Sverdrup dynamics in the Southern Ocean (40°S to 60°S) over seasonal time scales. Sverdrup dynamics are shown to be inadequate to describe the circulation in the South Atlantic and Indian oceans. The Sverdrup circulation in the South Pacific is reasonable...
Planetary or Rossby waves are the predominant way in which the ocean adjusts on long (year to decade) timescales. The motion of long planetary waves is westward, at speeds ≥1 cm s⁻¹ . Until recently, very few experimental investigations of such waves were possible because of scarce data. The advent...
A mechanism by which long planetary waves in the ocean may propagate significantly faster than the classical long baroclinic Rossby waves is investigated. The mechanism depends on the poleward thickening of intermediate density layers and the concomitant thinning of near-surface and deep layers. These features of the mass distribution are...
Three months of vector wind observations from the Seasat-A satellite scatterometer (SASS) are used to construct gridded fields of monthly average wind stress and wind stress curl over the global ocean. These fields are examined to identify features either poorly resolved or not present in wind stress fields constructed from...
The sea-state bias in Geosat altimeter range measurements expressed as a percentage of significant
wave height (SWH) is examined as a function of SWH. The bias is shown to be approximately
a fixed -3.5% of SWH for SWH smaller than about 4 m. For larger SWH, the bias decreases in...
A Geosat altimeter wind speed algorithm is derived by cross-calibrating Geosat and Seasat
altimeter estimates of the normalized radar cross section σ₀ and modifying an existing Seasat
altimeter wind speed model function to obtain a model function appropriate for Geosat observations.
It is argued that the σ₀ distribution measured by...
The variability of sea level and surface geostrophic currents in the Southern Ocean is investigated from the first 26 months of unclassified Geosat altimeter data (November 1986 to December 1988). Because of problems unique to Geosat, it has been necessary to develop new techniques for analyzing the height data. These...