CoAuthors

Lionel Renault (UCLA, USA); Ananda Pascual (IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB), Spain); Pierre Brasseur (LGGE, France)

The aim of this work is to study the characteristics of mesoscale eddies in the Western Mediterranean Sea, an area marked with a small Rossby radius (15 km). In that perspective, we designed a new high resolution (1/32°, eddy resolving) simulation of the area for the period 1992-2012. Validation diagnoses show that the model is realistic and we can apply several methods for eddy detection and tracking to the dataset. Temporal and spatial patterns arise that are compared to the eddy detection in a lower resolution model NEMOMED12 (1/12°) and observations from satellite altimetry. The number of detected eddies shows an annual and semi-annual cycle that we investigate examining 3D structure of the detected eddies and running different simulations. This approach allows to determine the influence of the atmospheric forcing and thermohaline properties in this cycle as well as the potential role in modulating large scale circulation and heat fluxes.