Séminaire
This talk will offer a perspective on the recently discovered realm of submesoscale currents in the ocean. They are intermediate-scale flow structures in the form of density fronts and filaments, topographic wakes, and persistent coherent vortices at the surface and throughout the interior. They are created from mesoscale eddies and strong currents, and they provide a dynamical conduit for energy transfer toward microscale dissipation and diapycnal mixing. Consideration is given to their generation mechanisms, instabilities, life-cycles, disruption of approximately diagnostic force balance (e.g., geostrophy), turbulent cascades, internal-wave interactions, and transport and dispersion of materials. At a fundamental level more questions remain than answers, implicating a program for further research.