S-MODE: the Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment

S-MODE is a NASA Earth Venture Suborbital investigation that combines novel aircraft remote-sensing techniques with coordinated measurements from ships and a fleet of uncrewed vehicles and other measurement platforms to study submesoscale ocean dynamics (scales less than about 10 km) and their contribution to vertical transport in the upper ocean. Oceanic fronts and the submesoscale instabilities that develop on them are thought to be important for vertical transport in the upper ocean, but these rapidly evolving features have been difficult to observe in detail. High-resolution computational models produce the features, but they need to be checked against observations. S-MODE addresses these challenges with coordinated sampling from three research aircraft, a research vessel, and dozens of uncrewed surface and subsurface platforms.