The history of a northeast atlantic salt lens of mediterranean origin

Coherent, subsurface, mesoscale vortices called meddies are occasionally formed as salty water flows out from the mediterranean Sea into the North Atlantic. The life history of meddies is of interest to oceanographers for at least two different reasons. The first is to observe and assess their role in the lateral dispersion of heat and salt. A second reason for studying meddy is that it may be viewed as an isolated deep water laboratory with its own dynamics, whose mixing behaviour over an extended period of time may be compared with the estimated changes from smaller scale processes