one interconnected pair of which was located within about 20 km of the shoreline
and another pair at a distance about 50 km from the shore northeast of the Bosporus
Strait, was given in a number of publications (see [31]; Fig. 1 in [23]; Fig. 6.15 in
[20]). The comment to this picture (picture in the sunglitter on September 18, 1992)
by Robert Stevenson [31] is interesting: “This spiral-eddy field was in that location
throughout the mission and was caught in several photos over three days, although
individual eddies could not be identified one day to the next. There is no explanation for the absence of eddies in the waters east and northeast from the Black Sea
mouth of the Bosporous”. It follows from this comment that the eddy pattern was
local, it appeared spontaneously, its time scale was a few days, and the lifetime of
individual vortices did not exceed a day. Mechanism or mechanisms of generation
of eddy fields in such cases are unknown. Heterogeneity of atmospheric flow (wind)
or convection in the surface layer of the ocean were mentioned as the hypothetical
mechanisms of formation of solitary spiral eddies, group/fields of such eddies in the
open sea [5, 9, 20].
Fig. 8 Dense packing of eddies offshore of the Danube Delta (the northwestern Black Sea). Part
of an Envisat ASAR image of August 29, 2009, 08:14 UTC
Satellite Remote Sensing of Submesoscale Eddies …
405
and another pair at a distance about 50 km from the shore northeast of the Bosporus
Strait, was given in a number of publications (see [31]; Fig. 1 in [23]; Fig. 6.15 in
[20]). The comment to this picture (picture in the sunglitter on September 18, 1992)
by Robert Stevenson [31] is interesting: “This spiral-eddy field was in that location
throughout the mission and was caught in several photos over three days, although
individual eddies could not be identified one day to the next. There is no explanation for the absence of eddies in the waters east and northeast from the Black Sea
mouth of the Bosporous”. It follows from this comment that the eddy pattern was
local, it appeared spontaneously, its time scale was a few days, and the lifetime of
individual vortices did not exceed a day. Mechanism or mechanisms of generation
of eddy fields in such cases are unknown. Heterogeneity of atmospheric flow (wind)
or convection in the surface layer of the ocean were mentioned as the hypothetical
mechanisms of formation of solitary spiral eddies, group/fields of such eddies in the
open sea [5, 9, 20].
Fig. 8 Dense packing of eddies offshore of the Danube Delta (the northwestern Black Sea). Part
of an Envisat ASAR image of August 29, 2009, 08:14 UTC
Satellite Remote Sensing of Submesoscale Eddies …
405