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GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS,
VOL. 32,
L12607,
4 PP., 2005
doi:10.1029/2005GL022728
Observational evidence of alternating zonal jets in the world ocean
International Pacific Research Center, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
International Pacific Research Center, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
The Earth Simulator Center, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama, Japan
Multiple zonal jets with the east-west velocity direction alternating with latitude are discovered in satellite altimetry data. The time-varying jets are shown to populate every part of the world ocean and its marginal seas and are best seen in the anomaly of geostrophic vorticity. At midlatitudes the jets have a meridional wavelength of about 300 kms with r.m.s. sea level, velocity and vorticity values of 2.4 cm, 6.9 cm/s and 1.5 · 10−6 s−1, correspondingly. Realistic data from the high-resolution OGCM run on the Earth Simulator are used to justify high vertical coherence of the jets structure and relevance of the jets to an evolving mesoscale eddy field. Strong coupling between the jets and mesoscale eddies is hypothesized.
Received 15 February 2005; accepted 20 May 2005; published 21 June 2005.
Citation: (2005), Observational evidence of alternating zonal jets in the world ocean, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L12607, doi:10.1029/2005GL022728.
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