CoAuthors

Saulo Soares (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, United States); Teresa Chereskin (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, United States); Marcello Passaro (Deutsches Geodätisches Forschungsinstitut, Technische Universität München, Germany)

In the California Current System, exchanges between the coast and open ocean are modulated by small-scale transient eddy features. We assess the observability of these features using altimeter data from Sentinel 6/Jason-CS along with other high-resolution altimeter data from Jason-3, AltiKa, and Sentinel-3. We compare SAR-mode altimetry with Ku and C-band altimeter data from the high-resolution retracked altimeter data released as part of the ALES product. These observations are evaluated in the context of shipboard in situ observations from shipboard acoustic Doppler current profiler measurements and from the on-board thermosalinograph and with high-frequency radar measurements. A summer 2020 research cruise collected underway CTD observations along multiple transects across an eddy, providing a useful measure of sea surface height compared with in situ steric height. Altimeter data are used to assess the scales of variability that dominate cross-shelf exchange and the mechanisms responsible for coastal-to-open ocean exchange.