Gérald Dibarboure

Abstract Ocean submesoscale (1–100 km) processes and their substantial impact on Earth’s climate system have been increasingly emphasized in recent decades by high-resolution numerical models and regional observations1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11. However, the dynamics and energy associated with these processes, including submesoscale eddies and nonlinear internal waves, have never been observed from a global perspective.

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/openaccess.

Abstract Sea-level measurements from radar satellite altimetry have reached a high level of accuracy and precision, which enables detection of global mean sea-level rise and attribution of most of the rate of rise to greenhouse gas emissions. This achievement is far beyond the original objectives of satellite altimetry missions. However, recent research shows that there is still room for improving the performance of satellite altimetry.