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  • American Meteorological Society  (33)
  • 1
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 36 (2006): 457-473, doi:10.1175/JPO2849.1.
    Description: Properties and seasonal evolution of North Pacific Ocean subtropical mode water (STMW) within and south of the Kuroshio Extension recirculation gyre are analyzed from profiling float data and additional hydrographic and shipboard ADCP measurements taken during 2004. The presence of an enhanced recirculation gyre and relatively low mesoscale eddy variability rendered this year favorable for the formation of STMW. Within the recirculation gyre, STMW formed from late-winter convection that reached depths greater than 450 m near the center of the gyre. The lower boundary of STMW, corresponding to σθ 25.5 kg m−3, was set by the maximum depth of the late-winter mixed layer. Properties within the deep portions of the STMW layer remained largely unchanged as the season progressed. In contrast, the upper boundary of the STMW layer eroded steadily as the seasonal thermocline deepened from late April to August. Vertical eddy diffusivity responsible for this erosion was estimated from a budget analysis of potential vorticity to be in the range of 2–5 × 10−4 m2 s−1. The latitudinal extent of the STMW formation was narrow, extending from 30°N to the Kuroshio Extension jet near 35°N. South of 30°N, STMW did not form locally but was transported from the recirculation gyre by lateral induction.
    Description: This study was supported by NSF as part of a Collaborative Research Project (OCE- 0220680 to UH, OCE-0221008 to URI, and OCE- 0220161 to WHOI).
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Article
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  • 2
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2008. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 38 (2008): 1764-1779, doi:10.1175/2008JPO3921.1.
    Description: Middepth, time-mean circulation in the western North Pacific Ocean (28°–45°N, 140°–165°E) is investigated using drift information from the profiling floats deployed in the Kuroshio Extension System Study (KESS) and the International Argo programs. A well-defined, cyclonic recirculation gyre (RG) is found to exist north of the Kuroshio Extension jet, confined zonally between the Japan Trench (145°E) and the Shatsky Rise (156°E), and bordered to the north by the subarctic boundary along 40°N. This northern RG, which is simulated favorably in the eddy-resolving OGCM for the Earth Simulator (OFES) hindcast run model, has a maximum volume transport at 26.4 Sv across 159°E and its presence persists on the interannual and longer time scales. An examination of the time-mean x-momentum balance from the OFES hindcast run output reveals that horizontal convergence of Reynolds stresses works to accelerate both the eastward-flowing Kuroshio Extension jet and a westward mean flow north of the meandering jet. The fact that the northern RG is eddy driven is further confirmed by examining the turbulent Sverdrup balance, in which convergent eddy potential vorticity fluxes are found to induce the cyclonic RG across the background potential vorticity gradient field. For the strength of the simulated northern RG, the authors find the eddy dissipation effect to be important as well.
    Description: This study was supported by NSF through Grant OCE-0220680 (UH) and OCE-0220161 (WHOI).
    Keywords: Gyres ; Ocean circulation ; Profilers ; Jets ; Transport
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 3
    Publication Date: 2018-03-01
    Description: The transition scale Lt from balanced geostrophic motions to unbalanced wave motions, including near-inertial flows, internal tides, and inertia–gravity wave continuum, is explored using the output from a global 1/48° horizontal resolution Massachusetts Institute of Technology general circulation model (MITgcm) simulation. Defined as the wavelength with equal balanced and unbalanced motion kinetic energy (KE) spectral density, Lt is detected to be geographically highly inhomogeneous: it falls below 40 km in the western boundary current and Antarctic Circumpolar Current regions, increases to 40–100 km in the interior subtropical and subpolar gyres, and exceeds, in general, 200 km in the tropical oceans. With the exception of the Pacific and Indian sectors of the Southern Ocean, the seasonal KE fluctuations of the surface balanced and unbalanced motions are out of phase because of the occurrence of mixed layer instability in winter and trapping of unbalanced motion KE in shallow mixed layer in summer. The combined effect of these seasonal changes renders Lt to be 20 km during winter in 80% of the Northern Hemisphere oceans between 25° and 45°N and all of the Southern Hemisphere oceans south of 25°S. The transition scale’s geographical and seasonal changes are highly relevant to the forthcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission. To improve the detection of balanced submesoscale signals from SWOT, especially in the tropical oceans, efforts to remove stationary internal tidal signals are called for.
    Print ISSN: 0022-3670
    Electronic ISSN: 1520-0485
    Topics: Geosciences , Physics
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  • 4
    Publication Date: 2016-03-01
    Description: Utilizing the framework of effective surface quasigeostrophic (eSQG) theory, this study explores the potential of reconstructing the 3D upper-ocean circulation structures, including the balanced vertical velocity w field, from high-resolution sea surface height (SSH) data of the planned Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission. Specifically, the authors utilize the 1/30°, submesoscale-resolving, OFES model output and subject it to the SWOT simulator that generates the along-swath SSH data with expected measurement errors. Focusing on the Kuroshio Extension region in the North Pacific where regional Rossby numbers range from 0.22 to 0.32, this study finds that the eSQG dynamics constitute an effective framework for reconstructing the 3D upper-ocean circulation field. Using the modeled SSH data as input, the eSQG-reconstructed relative vorticity ζ and w fields are found to reach a correlation of 0.7–0.9 and 0.6–0.7, respectively, in the 1000-m upper ocean when compared to the original model output. Degradation due to the SWOT sampling and measurement errors in the input SSH data for the ζ and w reconstructions is found to be moderate, 5%–25% for the 3D ζ field and 15%–35% for the 3D w field. There exists a tendency for this degradation ratio to decrease in regions where the regional eddy variability (or Rossby number) increases.
    Print ISSN: 0022-3670
    Electronic ISSN: 1520-0485
    Topics: Geosciences , Physics
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  • 5
    Publication Date: 2017-09-08
    Print ISSN: 0894-8755
    Electronic ISSN: 1520-0442
    Topics: Geography , Geosciences , Physics
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  • 6
    Publication Date: 2017-05-01
    Description: Previous studies have found that the decadal variability of eddy kinetic energy (EKE) in the upstream Kuroshio Extension is negatively correlated with the jet strength, which seems counterintuitive at first glance because linear stability analysis usually suggests that a stronger jet would favor baroclinic instability and thus lead to stronger eddy activities. Using a time-varying energetics diagnostic methodology, namely, the localized multiscale energy and vorticity analysis (MS-EVA), and the MS-EVA-based nonlinear instability theory, this study investigates the physical mechanism responsible for such variations with the state estimate from the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO), Phase II. For the first time, it is found that the decadal modulation of EKE is mainly controlled by the barotropic instability of the background flow. During the high-EKE state, violent meanderings efficiently induce strong barotropic energy transfer from mean kinetic energy (MKE) to EKE despite the rather weak jet strength. The reverse is true in the low-EKE state. Although the enhanced meander in the high-EKE state also transfers a significant portion of energy from mean available potential energy (MAPE) to eddy available potential energy (EAPE) through baroclinic instability, the EAPE is not efficiently converted to EKE as the two processes are not well correlated at low frequencies revealed in the time-varying energetics. The decadal modulation of barotropic instability is found to be in pace with the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation but with a time lag of approximately 2 years.
    Print ISSN: 0022-3670
    Electronic ISSN: 1520-0485
    Topics: Geosciences , Physics
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  • 7
    Publication Date: 2019-01-01
    Description: The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission aims to measure the sea surface height (SSH) at a high spatial resolution using a Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn). The primary oceanographic objective is to characterize the ocean eddies at a spatial resolution of 15 km for 68% of the ocean surface. This resolution is derived from the ratio between the wavenumber spectrum of the conventional altimeter (projected to submesoscale) and the SWOT SSH errors. While the 15-km threshold is useful as a global approximation of the spatial scales resolved by SWOT (SWOT scale), it can be misleading for regional studies. Here we revisit the problem using a high-resolution (~2-km horizontal grid spacing) tide-resolving global ocean simulation and map the SWOT scale as a function of location and season. The results show that the SWOT scale increases, in general, from about 15 km at low latitudes to ~30–45 km at mid- and high latitudes but with a large geographical dependence. A SWOT scale smaller than 30 km is expected in the high-latitude energetic regions. The SWOT scale varies seasonally as a result of the seasonality in both the noise and ocean signals. The seasonality also has a geographical dependence. Both eddies and internal gravity waves/tides contribute significantly to the SWOT scale variation. Our analysis provides model predictions for interpreting the anticipated observations from SWOT and guidance for the development of analysis methodologies.
    Print ISSN: 0739-0572
    Electronic ISSN: 1520-0426
    Topics: Geography , Geosciences , Physics
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  • 8
    Publication Date: 2007-07-15
    Description: Air–sea coupled variability is investigated in this study by focusing on the observed sea surface temperature signals in the Kuroshio Extension (KE) region of 32°–38°N and 142°E–180°. In this region, both the oceanic circulation variability and the heat exchange variability across the air–sea interface are the largest in the midlatitude North Pacific. SST variability in the KE region has a dominant time scale of ∼10 yr and this decadal variation is caused largely by the regional, wind-induced sea surface height changes that represent the lateral migration and strengthening/weakening of the KE jet. The importance of the air–sea coupling in influencing KE jet is explored by dividing the large-scale wind forcing into those associated with the intrinsic atmospheric variability and those induced by the SST changes in the KE region. The latter signals are extracted from the NCEP–NCAR reanalysis data using the lagged correlation analysis. In the absence of the SST feedback, the intrinsic atmospheric forcing enhances the decadal and longer time-scale SST variance through oceanic advection but fails to capture the observed decadal spectral peak. When the SST feedback is present, a warm (cold) KE SST anomaly works to generate a positive (negative) wind stress curl in the eastern North Pacific basin, resulting in negative (positive) local sea surface height (SSH) anomalies through Ekman divergence (convergence). As these wind-forced SSH anomalies propagate into the KE region in the west, they shift the KE jet and alter the sign of the preexisting SST anomalies. Given the spatial pattern of the SST-induced wind stress curl forcing, the optimal coupling in the midlatitude North Pacific occurs at the period of ∼10 yr, slightly longer than the basin-crossing time of the baroclinic Rossby waves along the KE latitude.
    Print ISSN: 0894-8755
    Electronic ISSN: 1520-0442
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  • 9
    Publication Date: 2014-02-10
    Description: Being the extension of a wind-driven western boundary current, the Kuroshio Extension (KE) has long been recognized as a turbulent current system rich in large-amplitude meanders and energetic pinched-off eddies. An important feature emerging from recent satellite altimeter measurements and eddy-resolving ocean model simulations is that the KE system exhibits well-defined decadal modulations between a stable and an unstable dynamic state. Here the authors show that the decadally modulating KE dynamic state can be effectively defined by the sea surface height (SSH) anomalies in the 31°–36°N, 140°–165°E region. By utilizing the SSH-based KE index from 1977 to 2012, they demonstrate that the time-varying KE dynamic state can be predicted at lead times of up to ~6 yr. This long-term predictability rests on two dynamic processes: 1) the oceanic adjustment is via baroclinic Rossby waves that carry interior wind-forced anomalies westward into the KE region and 2) the low-frequency KE variability influences the extratropical storm tracks and surface wind stress curl field across the North Pacific basin. By shifting poleward (equatorward) the storm tracks and the large-scale wind stress curl pattern during its stable (unstable) dynamic state, the KE variability induces a delayed negative feedback that can enhance the predictable SSH variance on the decadal time scales.
    Print ISSN: 0894-8755
    Electronic ISSN: 1520-0442
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  • 10
    Publication Date: 2015-02-11
    Description: Regional sea level trend and variability in the Pacific Ocean have often been considered to be induced by low-frequency surface wind changes. This study demonstrates that significant sea level trend and variability can also be generated by eddy momentum flux forcing due to time-varying instability of the background oceanic circulation. Compared to the broad gyre-scale wind-forced variability, the eddy-forced sea level changes tend to have subgyre scales and, in the North Pacific Ocean, they are largely confined to the Kuroshio Extension region (30°–40°N, 140°–175°E) and the Subtropical Countercurrent (STCC) region (18°–28°N, 130°–175°E). Using a two-layer primitive equation model driven by the ECMWF wind stress data and the eddy momentum fluxes specified by the AVISO sea surface height anomaly data, the relative importance of the wind- and eddy-forced regional sea level trends in the past two decades is quantified. It is found that the increasing (decreasing) trend south (north) of the Kuroshio Extension is due to strengthening of the regional eddy forcing over the past two decades. On the other hand, the decreasing (increasing) sea level trend south (north) of the STCC is caused by the decadal weakening of the regional eddy momentum flux forcing. These decadal eddy momentum flux changes are caused by the background Kuroshio Extension and STCC changes in connection with the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) wind pattern shifting from a positive to a negative phase over the past two decades.
    Print ISSN: 0894-8755
    Electronic ISSN: 1520-0442
    Topics: Geography , Geosciences , Physics
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