No abstract

The Atlantic Water (AW) enters the Arctic through the Fram Strait and the Barents Sea, and propagates with the Arctic Boundary Current (ABC) cyclonically along the Arctic continental margins (Rudels et al., 2012; Schauer et al., 1997). In the Barents Sea and north of Svalbard, the AW is warmer than the near-freezing polar waters and occupies the near-surface layer of the water column, delaying sea ice formation and melting ice that is advected into the region (Meyer et al., 2017; Smedsrud et al., 2013). This sea ice melt leads to a gradual cooling and freshening of surface waters, and subsequently to subduction of the eastward propagating AW. The Barents Sea branch of the AW exits the shelf regions mainly through St. Anna Trough and joins the eastward propagating Fram Strait branch. A

This is the first multiplatform evaluation involving data from the new Sentinel-3A altimeter. An experiment was undertaken in the Algerian Basin, employing an ocean glider and a ship mission, along the same track and synchronous with an overpass of the Sentinel-3A mission. This provided three independent views of the ocean velocity field, along a section that encompassed three different oceanographic regimes. The results demonstrate the capacity of Sentinel-3A to retrieve fine-scale oceanographic features (~20 km). The intercomparison with in situ platforms showed a significant improvement, order 30% in resolution and 42% in velocity accuracy using a synthetic aperture radar mode with respect to lower-resolution mode of conventional altimetry. In addition, the three-platform view provided valuable insight into the variability of evolving oceanographic features, in an area of the Mediterranean that remains chronically under sampled.

Abstract. The Weddell Gyre plays a crucial role in the modification of climate by advecting heat poleward to the Antarctic ice shelves and by regulating the density of water masses that feed the lowest limb of the global ocean overturning circulation. However, our understanding of Weddell Gyre water mass properties is limited to regions of data availability, primarily along the Prime Meridian. The aim of this paper is to provide a data set of the upper water column properties of the entire Weddell Gyre. Objective mapping was applied to Argo float data in order to produce spatially gridded, time-composite maps of temperature and salinity for fixed pressure levels ranging from 50 to 2000 dbar, as well as temperature, salinity and pressure at the level of the sub-surface temperature maximum. While the data are currently too limited to incorporate time into the gridded structure, the data are extensive enough to produce maps of the entire region across three time-composite periods (2001-2005, 2006-2009 and 2010-2013), which can be used to determine how representative conclusions drawn from data collected along general RV transect lines are on a gyre scale perspective. The work presented here represents the technical prerequisite for addressing climatological research questions in forthcoming studies. The data sets are available in netCDF format at

[1] Western Mediterranean Intermediate Water (WIW) is formed in winter in the North-Western Mediterranean. WIW, identifiable as a distinct temperature minimum layer between Atlantic-Mediterranean Interface waters and the denser Levantine Intermediate Water, is carried down the east coast of Spain in anticyclonic mode water eddies, or "weddies" eventually reaching the Alboran sea. A previous detailed analysis of a weddy in the vicinity of the Almeria-Oran front indicated that it could have accounted for 10% of a winter's production of WIW, but this analysis was unable to consider turbulent dissipation. In this study we present microstructure measurements across a similar observation of WIW in the vicinity of the Almeria-Oran front and show that this figure could be conservative by 15-50% due to the turbulent dissipation associated with a weddy.