Eddy Probability
ProWhere the forecast sea surface bends most sharply, which is what the middle of an eddy looks like. Despite the name it is not a probability — it ranks within each day's picture, so treat it as context.
Updates daily; forecast in 3-hour steps
More detail
What you see. The color runs on a 0-to-1 scale with no units, and the scale is rebuilt for every frame, so the brightest part of the map is always bright. A bright patch alone is not evidence that an eddy is there.
How to use it. Look for closed ring or blob shapes that hold across several frames and several days. Then look at Sea Level Anomaly for the same spot. A closed red or blue patch there backs it up and tells you warm or cold. In Layer Settings you can change the Colormap and the Opacity.
How it relates to the other eddy layers. Cyclonic Velocity Front (Cold-Core Rim) and Anticyclonic Velocity Front (Warm-Core Rim) show the rim, where the water rips, so their bright ring sits slightly apart from this layer's bright patch. Use Eddy Probability to spot a likely eddy, Sea Level Anomaly to confirm it and tell warm from cold, and the Velocity Front layers to find its fast edge.
Who makes it. RipIQ makes this layer itself from the forecast sea surface height of HYCOM (U.S. Navy model). The layer covers the Gulf of America, the East Coast and Baja.
Its limits. A ridge or a fast one-way current can look like an eddy here. The forecast behind it has about 5 nautical miles of real detail. There are eight frames a day, three hours apart. The newest frame is from a run started between one and four days ago, and the time slider reaches up to 7 days ahead as a forecast.
The numbers
| How often it updates | Once a day, as 8 frames three hours apart |
| How fresh it usually is | The newest frame is from a run started between one and four days ago |
| How detailed it is | About 5 nautical miles of real detail |
| Where it covers | Gulf of America, East Coast and Baja. Outside the regions the map shows the chart alone; the layers stop at the region's edge. |
| How far back you can look | 8 days back |
| How far forward you can look | Up to 7 days ahead, as a forecast |
| Goes blank under cloud? | Never |
| Observed or modeled | Calculated by RipIQ from a model field |
| What you see on screen | A 0-to-1 ranking with no units, rebuilt for every frame |
Source: computed by RipIQ from SSH - Altimetry (HYCOM model sea surface height).