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Apr 5, 2012 - between mass and steric contributions to z, among other aspects of ocean ..... (The MathWorks Inc., Natick, MA, USA). Spherical harmonic ...
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L07603, doi:10.1029/2012GL051301, 2012

High frequency barotropic ocean variability observed by GRACE and satellite altimetry Katherine J. Quinn1 and Rui M. Ponte1 Received 9 February 2012; accepted 7 March 2012; published 5 April 2012.

[1] Previous theoretical and model-based studies of the relationship between ocean bottom pressure ( pb) and sea level (z) suggest primarily barotropic variability at mid to high latitudes for scales greater than a few hundred kilometers and periods less than a few months. We use 7-day GRACE solutions and equivalent satellite altimetry maps, spatially smoothed over 750 km, to investigate the relation between pb and z. The observed fields are significantly coherent at high latitudes for periods of 14– 180 days and mid latitudes for periods of 30–100 days. The admittance amplitude between observed pb and z is close to 1 for higher frequencies and drops off for lower frequencies. The results provide, for the first time, global observational evidence for the barotropic nature of largescale ocean variability at mid and high latitudes. We also demonstrate that GRACE data contain significant information over the oceans at periods

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