Eddies in Marine Science

It is now well known that the mid-ocean flow is almost everywhere domi­ nated by so-called synoptic or meso-scale eddies, rotating about nearly vertical axes and extending throughout the water column. A typical mid­ ocean horizontal scale is 100 km and a time scale is 100 days: these meso­ scale eddies have swirl speeds of order 10 cm s -1 which are usually con­ siderably greater than the long-term average flow. Many types of eddies with somewhat different scales and characteristics have be...