Complementary Use of Glider Data, Altimeter for Exploring Vertical Structure Of Mesoscale Eddies in the New England Coast

Mesoscale eddies are ubiquitous features in the global oceans, having long been recognized to influence the distribution of physical, and biogeochemical properties in the marine environment. They have also been shown to contribute to shelf-slope exchange and to strongly influence biological processes, either by inducing vertical fluxes of nutrients that can support new production or by passively advecting phytoplankton. Observations from the Ocean Observatories Initiative(OOI) Pioneer Array suggest that coastal ocean dynamics are changing rapidly New England, changes to shelf-slope exchange may significantly affect nutrient transport between the deep ocean and the continental shelf, with consequences for higher trophic level productivity, including commercially harvested fish. Much has been learned about eddy characteristics and propagation properties over the last few years. In particular, recent studies have shown that mesoscale variability in the ocean occurs primarily as nonlinear eddies, which in contrast to linear waves can transport momentum, heat, mass, and chemical constituents present in the seawater as they propagate. Many studies have used satellite observations of sea level anomalies (SLA) or results from numerical models to describe the horizontal structure and kinematic properties of eddies in diverse oceanic settings. However, much remains to be learned about their vertical structure. Here we apply recently developed eddy detection and eddy tracking algorithms to high-resolution SLA fields in combination with data from conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) sensors equipped in the Coastal Slocum Glider to investigate mesoscale eddies, especially their vertical structures, and their role on the New England Coast circulation.