Oceanic mesoscale eddies

It is widely appreciated that ocean mesoscales are filled with predominately westward-drifting sea- surface height (SSH) anomalies. These features are identified typically by closed height contours. They are geostrophically balanced, of spatial scales of O(10- 100) km, long-lived with a typical lifetime over 16 weeks, and are routinely tracked and archived in standard satellite altimeter products. Understanding the properties of these height anomalies is important because they represent a major source of energetic variability. Their drift also has key implications for material transport as their core could trap mass.