Shuiming Chen (University of Hawaii, United States); Patrice Klein (NASA-JPL, United States); Jinbo Wang (NASA-JPL, United States); Hector Torres (NASA-JPL, United States); Lee-Lueng Fu (NASA-JPL, United States); Dimitris Menemenlis (NASA-JPL, United States)

The globally-gridded AVISO SSH product of 1993-present based on multiple altimeter missions has become the backbone for advancing our understanding of the nature and variability of the ocean circulation/sea level on spatial scales > 150-200 km. Availability of recently-reprocessed along-track nadir altimeter data, along with the forth-coming wide-swath SWOT data, provides us now an opportunity to explore the upper ocean processes in the wavelength range of 15-150km. This presentation will review recent progress regarding the balanced dynamic processes in this smaller-mesoscale-to-submesoscale range, the validity of geostrophy, the eddy kinetic energy pathways, and the contributions to vertical heat/materials transport.