Topographic generation of an eddy at the edge of the East Greenland Current

Wadhams and Squire [1983] describe an ice‐water eddy at the edge of the East Greenland Current, located at about 79° and 1°E. The eddy has been sighted earlier [Vinje, 1977] and appears to occur in that general location with some regularity. Wadhams and Squire explain the eddy in terms of baroclinic instability. The criteria of Griffiths and Linden [1982] and Phillips [1954] suggest that the East Greenland Current is baroclinically unstable, and Phillips' theory indicates that the most unstable wavelength of a sinusoidal velocity perturbation is 50 km, in agreement with the approximate size of the observed eddy.