Brian Arbic (University of Michigan, United States)

The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite provides two-dimensional sea surface height (SSH) measurements at sub-10 km resolution. We use SWOT Level 3 SSH data in the Kuroshio region to investigate surface kinetic energy transfers and the validity of balance assumptions at submesoscales. The SSH field is separated into wave and eddy components using a recent method. The eddy component is used to compute velocities under both geostrophic and cyclogeostrophic assumptions, allowing us to assess how balance choices affect inferred flows. We compute relative vorticity and the Jacobian of streamfunction and vorticity from the filtered SSH, forming the basis for spectral flux diagnostics, following the approach of Arbic et al. (2013, JPO). The goal is to identify the direction of kinetic energy cascades, inverse and forward, based on SWOT observations. Results from SWOT will be compared with AVISO altimetry and MITgcm LLC simulations to evaluate the consistency of observed and modeled energy transfers.