AbstractThe increase of temporal resolution from weekly to daily and spatial resolution from ~1° to ~(1/4)° in merged altimeter sea surface height data along with their over two decades of time series opens an unprecedented opportunity to reveal the “spectrum” of eddy variabilities from days to years in time and from mesoscale to semimesoscale in space. Eddies with a lifetime shorter than 1 month or longer than 1 year are classified here as short lived and long lived, respectively. Contrasting the variabilities of short‐ and long‐lived eddies could be an effective way to explore their geographic origins and dynamic formations. In the time domain, the population fluctuations of short‐ and long‐lived eddies are basically dominated by annual and interannual component, respectively. The magnitude of kinematic and dynamic properties of oceanic eddies is positively correlated with their lifetime in general. Statistically, the properties of short‐lived (long‐lived) eddies experience a symmetric (an asymmetric) growth and decay with a single flat peak during their life cycles. In the space domain, eddy occurrence is observed as a high probability event, which can reach every corner of the ocean. However, homes of short‐ and long‐lived eddies are highly regionalized and are geographically separated. A prominent “young eddy belt” is observed in the tropical oceans for the first time. These findings suggest two fundamental characteristics with regard to short‐ and long‐lived mesoscale eddies: residing in largely separated geographic zones under different mechanisms while following a similar pattern of intrinsic life cycle in terms of property evolution.