On December 2nd, Solange Coadou-Chaventon defended her thesis on “The ocean fine-scale circulation as revealed by high-resolution field observations and SWOT altimetry”, supervised by Sabrina Speich and Sebastiaan Swart and carried out between the ENS and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

The ocean surface is covered with small eddies, fronts, meanders, and filaments embedded in larger-scale circulation. Classified as “small-scale,” these structures are suspected of influencing ocean circulation and marine ecosystems up to the climate scale. They redistribute energy between different scales and act as dynamic conduits connecting the ocean's surface layer to its interior.

However, a more complete understanding of these processes, including accurate assessments of their impacts on vertical tracer transport and energy transfer, is lacking due to the difficulty of conducting observations at the required spatial and temporal scales. During her thesis, Solange focused on observing and characterizing small-scale ocean dynamics in two different dynamic regions of the ocean: the northwest tropical Atlantic and the retroflection of the Agulhas Current. To do this, she used high-resolution observations from two different research projects, including both in situ data collected by autonomous platforms and sea surface height measurements made by the new SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite.

The LMD congratulates Solange on this important work and on the high quality of her thesis defense. Well done!

Find out more about her work:

- https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024JC021326

- https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2025GL115203