Eddies in the Southern Ocean As Seen From Orbit

The cloud cover over the Southern Ocean occasionally parts as it did on January 1, 2015 just west of the Drake Passage.
The VIIRS instrument on the Suomi NPP satellite glimpsed the above collection of ocean-color delineated eddies which have diameters ranging from a couple of kilometers to a couple of hundred kilometers. Recent studies indicate that eddy activity has been increasing in the Southern Ocean with possible implications for climate change.

Credit: NASA’s OceanColor/Suomi NPP/VIIRS Larger image