THE FLOW OF ENERGY THROUGH THE GLOBAL OCEAN PLAYS A FUNDAMENTAL ROLE IN GOVERNING OCEAN CIRCULATION ON A WIDE RANGE OF SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL SCALES AND THUS DIRECTLY IMPACTS THE CLIMATE SYSTEM. THE ENERGY ASSOCIATED WITH THE MESOSCALE FIELD IS OF PARTICULAR IMPORTANCE AS THIS COMPONENT OF THE FLOW FIELD CONTAINS APPROXIMATELY 90% OF THE TOTAL KINETIC ENERGY IN THE OCEAN AND DRIVES SIGNIFICANT ISOPYCNAL MIXING BUT IS NOT RESOLVED IN COUPLED CLIMATE MODELS. FURTHERMORE GLOBAL OBSERVATIONS OF MESOSCALE ENERGY HAVE BEEN MOSTLY LIMITED TO THE SEA SURFACE WHERE SATELLITE ALTIMETERS CAN EASILY DETECT SPATIAL VARIABILITY IN GEOSTROPHIC CURRENTS AND ASSOCIATED EDDY KINETIC ENERGY (EKE). A PERSISTENT MYSTERY IN PHYSICAL OCEANOGRAPHY IS HOW MESOSCALE ENERGY IS DISSIPATED A PROCESS WHICH LIKELY OCCURS NEAR THE OCEAN BOTTOM. YET TO DATE SUBSURFACE ESTIMATES OF EKE HAVE ONLY BEEN DERIVED FROM THE SPARSE SET OF MOORED CURRENT METERS IN THE OPEN OCEAN AND ARE ACCORDINGLY LIMITED TO ONLY A FEW LOCATIONS. FINALLY MOST MOORING DEPLOYMENTS ARE SHORT (TYPICALLY LESS THAN A YEAR) AND THUS DO NOT PROVIDE ROBUST CLIMATE RECORDS. THIS PROJECT AIMS TO FILL THIS SIGNIFICANT GAP IN OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE OCEAN BY ESTIMATING THE THREE-DIMENSIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF MESOSCALE KINETIC ENERGY IN THE UPPER 2000 M OF THE GLOBAL OCEAN DIRECTLY FROM OBSERVATIONS. TO ACCOMPLISH THIS GOAL WE WILL INTEGRATE MEASUREMENTS FROM THE SATELLITE ALTIMETRIC RECORD (PROVIDING A REFERENCE VELOCITY NEAR THE SURFACE) WITH THE SUBSURFACE OBSERVATIONS FROM THE ARGO ARRAY OF PROFILING FLOATS (FROM WHICH WE WILL ESTIMATE BOTH GEOSTROPHIC SHEAR AND VELOCITY AT DEPTH). THESE TECHNIQUES WILL BE DEVELOPED AND VERIFIED THROUGH DIRECT COMPARISON TO THE GLOBAL DATABASE OF MOORED CURRENT METER MEASUREMENTS AND SIMULATION EXPERIMENTS USING HIGH-RESOLUTION OCEAN MODELS. THE RESULTING FIRST-EVER GLOBAL ESTIMATES OF THREE DIMENSIONAL ANISOTROPIC MESOSCALE EDDY KINETIC ENERGY WILL BE ANALYZED TO TEST THEORETICAL PREDICTIONS BASED ON VERTICAL MODES AND LINEAR BAROCLINIC INSTABILITY WHICH WILL BE DERIVED FROM THE HYDROGRAPHIC CLIMATOLOGY OF THE ECCOV4 STATE ESTIMATE. WE WILL ALSO INVESTIGATE THE SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL VARIABILITY IN DEEP EKE AND ESTIMATE THE RATE OF MESOSCALE DISSIPATION VIA BOTTOM DRAG. FINALLY WE WILL USE THE ESTIMATES OF DEEP EKE TO DERIVE A NEW GLOBAL THREE-DIMENSIONAL ESTIMATE OF ISOPYCNAL DIFFUSIVITY AND COMPARE WITH THE DIFFUSIVITY INFERRED BY ECCOV4 VIA INVERSE METHODS.