Spirals on the sea
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/scimar.2001.65s2193Keywords:
Remote sensing, air-sea boundary, frontal formation, mixingAbstract
Spiral eddies were first seen in the sun glitter on the Apollo Mission 30 years ago; they have since been recorded on SAR missions and in the infrared. The spirals are globally distributed, 10-25 km in size and overwhelmingly cyclonic. They have not been explained. Under light winds favorable to visualization, linear surface features with high surfactant density and low surface roughness are of common occurrence. We have proposed that frontal formations concentrate the ambient shear and prevailing surfactants. Horizontal shear instabilities ensue when the shear becomes comparable to the coriolis frequency. The resulting vortices wind the liner features into spirals. The hypothesis needs to be tested by prolonged measurements and surface truth. Spiral eddies are a manifestation of a sub-mesoscale oceanography associated with upper ocean stirring; dimensional considerations suggest a horizontal diffusivity of order 103 m2 s-1.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2001 Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
© CSIC. Manuscripts published in both the print and online versions of this journal are the property of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, and quoting this source is a requirement for any partial or full reproduction.
All contents of this electronic edition, except where otherwise noted, are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. You may read here the basic information and the legal text of the licence. The indication of the CC BY 4.0 licence must be expressly stated in this way when necessary.
Self-archiving in repositories, personal webpages or similar, of any version other than the final version of the work produced by the publisher, is not allowed.
