Three‐compartment structure of subsurface‐intensified mesoscale eddies in the ocean

Abstract

AbstractMesoscale eddies are energetically dominant and pervasive over most of the world's oceans. Among them, many are subsurface intensified with strongest signals in the ocean interior such as mode‐water eddies, which trap water masses with distinctive properties and carry them over long distances. With both Argo profiling floats and atmospheric reanalysis data we showed that the structure of these eddies obeys a universal rule. Hence their three‐dimensional hydrographic fields can be readily reconstructed from very limited information. More interestingly, the volume of water trapped and moved by a mode‐water eddy is much greater than previously thought; it has a three‐compartment structure in the vertical with the mode water being sandwiched between two layers of notably different properties and accounting for only a portion of the total trapped volume.