Ocean surface currents directly imaged from space
Abstract
For more than four decades, satellite images of ocean temperature and colour have revealed jets, swirling eddies, and filaments. Yet the currents that shape these structures have never been directly imaged from space. This observational gap limits our understanding of the ocean's impact on climate and marine ecosystems, as these currents modulate exchanges between the coast and open ocean, vertical transport to the deep sea, and fluxes of heat, carbon, and nutrients. Here we demonstrate the first direct satellite imaging of kilometre-scale surface currents using a tandem configuration of optical satellites that tracks surface wave propagation. This new capability shifts satellite observations beyond the predominantly geostrophic view of ocean circulation, revealing dynamics that have remained largely invisible to satellites - from intense coastal jets and equatorial flows to submesoscale motions just kilometres wide. Across these regimes, the elusive divergence of fronts and internal waves, thought to play a key role in upper-ocean vertical exchange, is concentrated at scales below 5 km, previously unresolved from space. These reference measurements provide a new observational window into the multiscale physics of the upper ocean and its mediating role for the Earth’s climate system and marine life.
Related
- Intensification of near-inertial currents in the Atlantic Ocean over the past two decades
- Estimating Vertical Ocean Velocity from Horizontal Currents: Linear and Depth-Conditional Neural-Network Approaches on a High-Resolution Regional Ocean Model
- Evaluating the performance of the surface water and ocean topography (SWOT) mission for monitoring reservoirs across the conterminous United States
- A Generative AI Framework for Inferring Consistent Ocean Statistics at Depth Using Sea Surface Data
- The Harmony scientific workbench part 2: High-resolution ocean wind stress and surface current retrieval
BibTeX
@misc{rascle2026ocean,
title = {{Ocean surface currents directly imaged from space}},
author = {Nicolas Gilles Rascle and Aurelien Ponte and Frederic Nouguier and Renaud Binet and Dhruv Balwada and Fabrice Ardhuin and Bertrand Chapron and Erwin W. J. Bergsma and Fabrice Collard and Louis Marie and Rafael Almar},
howpublished = {EarthArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.31223/x5vv49},
url = {https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/15198/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Ocean surface currents directly imaged from space
AU - Nicolas Gilles Rascle
AU - Aurelien Ponte
AU - Frederic Nouguier
AU - Renaud Binet
AU - Dhruv Balwada
AU - Fabrice Ardhuin
AU - Bertrand Chapron
AU - Erwin W. J. Bergsma
AU - Fabrice Collard
AU - Louis Marie
AU - Rafael Almar
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/25
PB - EarthArXiv
DO - 10.31223/x5vv49
UR - https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/15198/
AB - For more than four decades, satellite images of ocean temperature and colour have revealed jets, swirling eddies, and filaments. Yet the currents that shape these structures have never been directly imaged from space. This observational gap limits our understanding of the ocean's impact on climate and marine ecosystems, as these currents modulate exchanges between the coast and open ocean, vertical transport to the deep sea, and fluxes of heat, carbon, and nutrients. Here we demonstrate the first direct satellite imaging of kilometre-scale surface currents using a tandem configuration of optical satellites that tracks surface wave propagation. This new capability shifts satellite observations beyond the predominantly geostrophic view of ocean circulation, revealing dynamics that have remained largely invisible to satellites - from intense coastal jets and equatorial flows to submesoscale motions just kilometres wide. Across these regimes, the elusive divergence of fronts and internal waves, thought to play a key role in upper-ocean vertical exchange, is concentrated at scales below 5 km, previously unresolved from space. These reference measurements provide a new observational window into the multiscale physics of the upper ocean and its mediating role for the Earth’s climate system and marine life.
ER -