Intense Currents in the Deep Northeast Pacific Ocean

Abstract

Observations of deep currents in the northeast Pacific Ocean are reported that indicate that although the eddy kinetic energy level is, as expected, generally low, the deep northeast Pacific is subject to occasional intensely energetic events. These events are energetic enough to dominate the distribution of kinetic energy in the water column and the depth-averaged kinetic energy. The assumption can no longer be made that deep flows are weak when estimating near-surface flows.