Using a seal to gather information on heat transport in difficult areas.
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Siegelman and her co-authors combined the seal's data with satellite altimetry data. The satellite data of the ocean surface showed where the swirling eddies were within the current and which eddies the seal was swimming through. Analyzing the combined dataset, the scientists paid particular attention to the role smaller ocean features played in vertical heat transport. Siegelman was surprised by the results.
"These medium-sized eddies are known to drive the production of small-scale fronts - sudden changes in water density similar to cold and warm fronts in the atmosphere," she said. "We found that these fronts were evident some 500 meters [550 yards] into the ocean interior, not just in the surface layer like many studies suggest, and that they played an active role in vertical heat transport."
According to Siegelman, their analysis showed that these fronts act like ducts that carry a lot of heat from the ocean interior back to the surface. "Most current modeling studies indicate that the heat would move from the surface to the ocean interior in these cases, but with the new observational data provided by the seal, we found that that's not the case," she said.
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