Submesoscale currents are pervasive throughout the ocean. They have intermediate space and time scales—neither mesoscale nor microscale—that have made them elusive for measurements and modeling until recently. In this brief article, a survey is presented of their primary characteristics and interpretive explanations, intended for a broad audience of physical and biogeochemical oceanographers. Besides their identifying scales, submesoscale currents are distinctive in their flow patterns, their essential dynamical processes, and their consequences for transport, mixing, and dissipation in the general circulation. There are two primary submesoscale populations, a frontal one in the near-surface layer with its typically reduced stratification, and another vortical one, generated in topographic wakes, that (sparsely) fills the oceanic interior.

中文翻译：

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亚中尺度电流调查

亚中尺度水流遍布整个海洋。它们具有中等的时空尺度（既不是中尺度也不是微观尺度），直到最近才使它们难以进行测量和建模。在这篇简短的文章中，将对它们的主要特征和解释性解释进行一次调查，以供广大物理和生物地球化学海洋学家使用。除了其可识别的尺度外，亚中尺度的电流还具有独特的流动模式，基本的动力学过程以及它们在总体循环中对运输，混合和耗散的影响。有两个主要的亚中尺度种群，一个是近地表层的正面种群，其地层通常减少，另一个是在地形尾波中产生的（稀疏）充满海洋内部的涡旋种群。