Seasonality of the Kuroshio Intensity East of Taiwan Modulated by Mesoscale Eddies
Abstract
The intensity of the Kuroshio Current east of Taiwan shows a distinct seasonality, but the mechanism remains unclear. Sea surface geostrophic velocity and mesoscale eddies derived from satellite altimeter data and gridded Argo-only geostrophic velocity data were used to analyze the contribution of the mesoscale eddy to the seasonality intensity of the Kuroshio Current in the East Taiwan Channel. Between August and January, the subtropical countercurrent (STCC) near the western boundary area (125°E-135°E) showed two branches, and led to a significant negative zonal velocity meridional gradient between 19°N and 21°N between October and December. Since the low potential vorticity water stacked up at the northern side of the STCC and eddy generation favored cyclonic eddies, this resulted in the dominance of cyclonic eddies between January and April east of Taiwan and weakened the Kuroshio Current.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMOS43C2103Y
- Keywords:
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- 1635 Oceans;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 4215 Climate and interannual variability;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERALDE: 4513 Decadal ocean variability;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICALDE: 4520 Eddies and mesoscale processes;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL