Abstract
The recently launched Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite provides an unprecedented two-dimensional measurement of the sea surface height (SSH) down to the oceanic submesoscale of 1–10 km. Using this measurement to make substantial progress requires the separation of vortical and wavy motions owing to their contrasting ramifications for the energy transfer; however, the separation is extremely challenging due to the long-repeat period of the SWOT satellite. To achieve a practical separation, here we adopt the linear normal-mode initialization technique used in numerical weather prediction. This separation method requires velocity data in addition to SSH. With concurrent measurements of SSH and velocity respectively from SWOT and the offshore high-frequency radar (HFR) system, this separation method proves valid and useful. The present study is expected to stimulate new discoveries associated with oceanic multiscale interactions and energy transfers.
Wang, C., Liu, Z. *, Lin, H., Chen, D., Yang, Q., & Ni, Q. (2025b). A practical separation of oceanic vortical and wavy motions entangled in the SWOT measurements, Geophysical Research Letters, 52(12), e2024GL113995.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL113995
