We diagnose the presence of instabilities in the global ocean by performing breeding upon a global ocean reanalysis (SODA) driven by observed winds(Carton et al, 2004). The bred vectors identify instabilities in several regions and seasons, such as the winter tropical instabilities at the northern edge of the cold tongue in the Pacific, and others in the Indian, Atlantic and Southern Oceans. We will present a diagnostic analysis characterizing the dynamic instabilities based on the perturbation (bred vector) energy equation.