Frontiers in Marine Science

EISSN: 2296-7745

SCIE

[논문]Interannual Modulation of Kuroshio in the East China Sea Over the Past Three Decades

SeongHyun Jo, Jae-Hong Moon

조승현, 문재홍

Taekyun Kim, Yuhe Tony Song and Hyeonsoo Cha

Previous studies have suggested that westward-migrating mesoscale eddies are a
dominant factor that modulate the interannual Kuroshio intensity in the East China Sea
(ECS), indicating a close positive correlation between them. According to the extended
record of altimetry-based sea level anomalies (SLAs) until 2020, however, the interannual
variation of the Kuroshio intensity no longer has a strong positive correlation with eddy
activity in the subtropical countercurrent (STCC) region since the early 2000s. Our
observational analyses showed that the Kuroshio intensity in the ECS can be
modulated by the combined effect of westward-migrating mesoscale eddies and
westward-propagating oceanic planetary waves from the east. Until the early 2000s,
the interannual variability of Kuroshio was mainly affected by eddy migration from the
STCC region, associated with oceanic instability driven by large-scale wind patterns over
the western North Pacific. Since then, oceanic planetary waves propagating westward
across the Pacific basin have largely modulated the interannual variability of the ECS￾Kuroshio intensity by superimposing the SLAs related to mesoscale eddies that
propagated towards the east of Taiwan.

2022.06.13.

doi: 10.3389/fmars.2022.909349