Eddies along front of warm winter current off the north coast of Spain and at Jovellanos Seamount

摘要

Two kinds of eddies in the Bay of Biscay were observed in 1990 by the use of satellite im- agery and in-situ measurements. Frontal eddies in the warm winter current off the north coast of Spain persist for about 3 months and have a vertical scale of 700 m and diameters of 80 to 150 km. According to our interpretation, these eddies are mainly generated by baroclinic instability of the warm winter cur- rent. The anticycolonic eddy at the Jovellanos Seamount is about 200 km in scale and has a lifetime of 7 months. The possible mechanisms for the generation of the eddy are baroclinic instability of the mean current, topographic interaction and atmospheric forcing.