Statistical analysis of the surface circulation of the California Current

We use a set of mixed‐layer drifting buoy trajectories from the California Current (20°N–40°N) during 1985–1990 to obtain statistically reliable estimates of the mean currents, the mean variance field, and the geographically varying diffusivity, integral timescales, and integral space scales. Typical values for the diffusivity are 1.1–8.7 × 10 7 cm 2 s −1 , while the timescales and space scales are 2.1–7.1 days and 16–59 km, respectively. The variance field displays a strong westward gradient out to 125°W, and diffusivity shows a tendency to decrease toward the southwest part of the domain. Significant anisotropy is found in the variance field near the coastal boundary and at 30°N, 130°W, which is the region where the subarctic and northern subtropical fronts approach the California Current. The antisymmetric component of the diffusivity tensor indicates that cyclonic eddies dominate the mesoscale signature of drifters in this region. We seek simple parameterizations to relate the scales of motion of the random velocity field to the diffusivity by testing least squares fits to κ ∞ ∝ u 0 2 T and κ ∞ ∝ u 0 L , where u 0 2 is the velocity variance. We found no cases for which these two hypotheses could be distinguished. For the meridional component the linear regressions are not successful, which suggests that the meridional departure velocities result from a flow regime that is significantly organized by, for example, waves or coherent structures. A subset of the drifters measured temperature along their tracks, and we use the resultant data to produce the first direct estimates of the horizontal eddy heat flux divergence based on Lagrangian estimates. In addition, we separately compute the “eddy diffusivity” parameterization of the eddy heat flux divergence, ∇ · 〈 u ′θ′〉 = ∇(κ∇Θ), using our diffusivity estimates and a sea surface temperature climatology. The two independent terms agree well, which provides a measure of reassurance about the diffusivity estimates. The eddy heat flux divergence in the California Current is very small (<5 W m −2 ) and does not appear to be significant in the long‐term heat budget of the upper ocean in this region.