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Published January 28, 2025 | Published
Journal Article Open

Submesoscale Eddy Contribution to Ocean Vertical Heat Flux Diagnosed From Airborne Observations

Torres, Hector S.1 ORCID icon
Wineteer, Alexander1 ORCID icon
Rodriguez, Ernesto1 ORCID icon
Klein, Patrice1, 2, 3 ORCID icon
Thompson, Andrew F.2 ORCID icon
Perkovic‐Martin, Dragana1 ORCID icon
Molemaker, Jeroen4 ORCID icon
Hypolite, Delphine4 ORCID icon
Callies, Joern2 ORCID icon
Farrar, J. Thomas5 ORCID icon
D'Asaro, Eric6 ORCID icon
Freilich, Mara A.7 ORCID icon
  • 1. ROR icon Jet Propulsion Lab
  • 2. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 3. ROR icon École Polytechnique
  • 4. ROR icon University of California, Los Angeles
  • 5. ROR icon Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
  • 6. ROR icon University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory
  • 7. ROR icon Brown University

Abstract

Submesoscale eddies (those smaller than 50 km) are ubiquitous throughout the ocean, as revealed by satellite infrared images. Diagnosing their impact on ocean energetics from observations remains a challenge. This study analyzes a turbulent field of submesoscale eddies using airborne observations of surface currents and sea surface temperature, with high spatial resolution, collected during the S-MODE experiment in October 2022. Assuming surface current divergence and temperature are homogeneous down to 30 m depth, we show that more than 80% of the upward vertical heat fluxes, reaching ∼227 W m⁻², is explained by the smallest resolved eddies, with a size smaller than 15 km. This result emphasizes the contribution of small-scale eddies, poorly represented in numerical models, to the ocean heat budget and, therefore, to the climate system.

Copyright and License

© 2025. The Author(s).

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Acknowledgement

The DopplerScatt team extends its gratitude to the crew of pilots and ground crew of the NASA King Air B200 aircraft for all the support during S-MODE field campaigns. We would like to acknowledge the S-MODE science team, and, particularly, Andrey Shcherbina for his leadership onboard of the Bold Horizon. This work was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under prime contract with NASA (80NM0018D0004), and was awarded under NASA Research Announcement (NRA) NNH17ZDA001N-EVS3, Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science (ROSES-2017), Appendix A.34: Earth Venture Suborbital-3; NASA Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (NASA S-MODE). PK acknowledges support from the SWOT Science Team, the NASA S-MODE project and the QuickSCat mission. ⓒ 2024 California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged.

Contributions

Conceptualization: Hector S. Torres, Patrice Klein.

Data curation: Hector S. Torres.

Formal analysis: Hector S. Torres.

Investigation: Hector S. Torres, Alexander Wineteer, Ernesto Rodriguez, Patrice Klein, Andrew F. Thompson, Dragana Perkovic‐Martin, Jeroen Molemaker, Delphine Hypolite, Jöern Callies, J. Thomas Farrar, Eric D’Asaro, Mara A. Freilich.

Methodology: Hector S. Torres.

Software: Hector S. Torres.

Validation: Hector S. Torres, Alexander Wineteer, Ernesto Rodriguez, Jeroen Molemaker, Delphine Hypolite.

Visualization: Hector S. Torres.

Writing – original draft: Hector S. Torres, Alexander Wineteer, Patrice Klein.

Writing – review & editing: Hector S. Torres, Alexander Wineteer, Ernesto Rodriguez, Patrice Klein, Andrew F. Thompson, Dragana Perkovic‐Martin, Jeroen Molemaker, Delphine Hypolite, Jöern Callies, J. Thomas Farrar, Eric D’Asaro, Mara A. Freilich.

Data Availability

The DopplerScatt and MOSES data used in this work have been made openly available on NASA's Physical Oceanography DAAC, https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/S-MODE (Rodriguez et al., 2023). Code and examples, along with video explanations for working with DopplerScatt data, are available from PO. DAAC's GitHub page, https://github.com/podaac/2022-SMODE-Open-Data-Workshop. The data set derived from DopplerScatt and MOSES to compute frontogenesis in this study is available at (Torres, 2024; Torres et al., 2024).

Supplemental Material

Supporting information (PDF)

 

Files

Geophysical Research Letters - 2025 - Torres - Submesoscale Eddy Contribution to Ocean Vertical Heat Flux Diagnosed From.pdf

Additional details

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