Mesoscale eddies play pivotal roles in the transport of energy and tracers in the ocean, and the parameterization of mesoscale eddies has proven to be essential in ocean and coupled climate models. While the theoretical understanding of mesoscale eddies has advanced greatly in the past decades, it is still far from being fully developed and far from the need of parameterization in ocean models.

The research group of Dr. LIU Hailong at the state key laboratory LASG, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, collaborated with Dr. Jianhua LU, a visiting senior scientist from Florida State University, recently proposed a new decomposition of eddies and the mean fields. They revealed in the first time that stationary mesoscale eddies widely exist in the oceans and contribute significant parts to the total eddy-induced transport and diffusion.  They found that stationary mesoscale eddies are deterministic to the upgradient transport underneath the mid-depth of the ocean, and also one of the major sources responsible for the anisotropy of eddy diffusivity. The decomposition of stationary and transient mesoscale eddies is helpful in clarifying the dynamics of upgradient transport in the mixed layer.    

The paper was published in Geophysical Research Letters (2016)：

Lu, J., F. Wang, H. Liu, and P. Lin (2016), Stationary mesoscale eddies, upgradient eddy fluxes, and the anisotropy of eddy diffusivity, Geophys. Res. Lett., 43, 743–751, doi:10.1002/2015GL067384 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL067384/abstract?campaign=woletoc