The Nascent Kuroshio of Lamon Bay

A northward flowing current, emanating from the North Equatorial Current (NEC) bifurcation at the Philippine margin, enters Lamon Bay along Luzon's eastern coast. There the NEC tropical water masses merge with subtropical water of the western North Pacific to form the Kuroshio. A northward flowing western boundary current is first observed near 16.5°N, marking the initiation of the Kuroshio. The current feeding into the nascent Kuroshio of Lamon Bay is bracketed by an anticyclonic dipole to its northeast and a cyclonic dipole to its southwest. Ship based observational programs in the spring seasons of 2011 and 2012, detect a shift of the Lamon Bay thermohaline stratification with marked enrichment of NEC tropical thermocline water in 2012 relative to a dominant western North Pacific subtropical stratification of 2011. Temperature - salinity time series from moorings spanning the two ship based observations, identify the timing of the transition as December 2011. The NEC bifurcation was further south in May 2012 than in May 2011. We suggest that the more southern bifurcation in May 2012 induced increased NEC thermocline water injection into Lamon Bay and nascent Kuroshio, increasing the linkage of the western North Pacific subtropical and tropical thermoclines. This connection was reduced in May 2011 as the NEC bifurcation shifted into a more northerly position and western North Pacific subtropical thermocline dominated Lamon Bay stratification

Can we detect submesoscale motions in drifter pair dispersion?

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 49(9), (2019): 2237-2254, doi: 10.1175/JPO-D-18-0181.1.A cluster of 45 drifters deployed in the Bay of Bengal is tracked for a period of four months. Pair dispersion statistics, from observed drifter trajectories and simulated trajectories based on surface geostrophic velocity, are analyzed as a function of drifter separation and time. Pair dispersion suggests nonlocal dynamics at submesoscales of 1–20 km, likely controlled by the energetic mesoscale eddies present during the observations. Second-order velocity structure functions and their Helmholtz decomposition, however, suggest local dispersion and divergent horizontal flow at scales below 20 km. This inconsistency cannot be explained by inertial oscillations alone, as has been reported in recent studies, and is likely related to other nondispersive processes that impact structure functions but do not enter pair dispersion statistics. At scales comparable to the deformation radius LD, which is approximately 60 km, we find dynamics in agreement with Richardson’s law and observe local dispersion in both pair dispersion statistics and second-order velocity structure functions.This research was supported by the Air Sea Interaction Regional Initiative (ASIRI) under ONR Grant N00014-13-1-0451 (SE and AM) and ONR Grant N00014-13-1-0477 (VH and LC). Additionally, AM and SE thank NSF (Grant OCE-I434788) and ONR (Grant N00014-16-1-2470) for support; VH and LC were further supported by ONR Grant N00014-15-1-2286 and NOAA GDP Grant NA10OAR4320156. We thank Joe LaCasce, Dhruv Balwada, and one anonymous reviewer for helpful comments and discussions that significantly improved this manuscript. The authors thank the captain and crew of the R/V Roger Revelle. The SVP-type drifters are part of the Global Drifter Program and supported by ONR Grant N00014-15-1-2286 and NOAA GDP Grant NA10OAR4320156 and are available under http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/dac/. The Ssalto/Duacs altimeter products were produced and distributed by the Copernicus Marine and Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS, http://www.marine.copernicus.eu)

Variability of near-surface circulation and sea surface salinity observed from Lagrangian drifters in the northern Bay of Bengal during the Waning 2015 Southwest Monsoon

Author Posting. © The Oceanography Society, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of The Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 29, no. 2 (2016): 124–133, doi:10.5670/oceanog.2016.45.A dedicated drifter experiment was conducted in the northern Bay of Bengal during the 2015 waning southwest monsoon. To sample a variety of spatiotemporal scales, a total of 36 salinity drifters and 10 standard drifters were deployed in a tight array across a freshwater front. The salinity drifters carried for the first time a revised sensor algorithm, and its performance during the 2015 field experiment is very encouraging for future efforts. Most of the drifters were quickly entrained in a mesoscale feature centered at about 16.5°N, 89°E and stayed close together during the first month of observations. While the eddy was associated with rather homogeneous temperature and salinity characteristics, much larger variability was found outside of it toward the coastline, and some of the observed salinity patches had amplitudes in excess of 1.5 psu. To particularly quantify the smaller spatiotemporal scales, an autocorrelation analysis of the drifter salinities for the first two deployment days was performed, indicating not only spatial scales of less than 5 km but also temporal variations of the order of a few hours. The hydrographic measurements were complemented by first estimates of kinematic properties from the drifter clusters, however, more work is needed to link the different observed characteristics.VH and LR were supported by ONR grant N00014- 13-1-0477 and NOAA GDP grant NA10OAR4320156. AM and SE were funded by ONR grant N00014‑13-1- 0451, and ED by ONR grant N00014-14-1-0235. BPK acknowledges financial support from the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES, Government of India)

Mean structure and variability of the Kuroshio from northeastern Taiwan to southwestern Japan

Author Posting. © The Oceanography Society, 2015. This article is posted here by permission of The Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 28, no. 4 (2015): 84-95, doi:10.5670/oceanog.2015.84.In the subtropical western North Pacific Ocean, the Kuroshio delivers heat, salt, and momentum poleward, much like its North Atlantic analog, the Gulf Stream. Though the Kuroshio generally flows along the western boundary from Taiwan to southeastern Japan as an “attached” current, the Kuroshio’s strength, vertical structure, and horizontal position undergo significant temporal and spatial variability along this entire route. Ubiquitous mesoscale eddies and complicated topography associated with a string of marginal seas combine to make the western North Pacific a region with complex circulation. Here, we synthesize results from the recent US Origins of the Kuroshio and Mindanao Currents and Taiwan Observations of Kuroshio Transport Variability observational programs with previous findings to build a comprehensive picture of the Kuroshio on its route from northeastern Taiwan to southeastern Japan, where the current finally transitions from a western boundary current into the Kuroshio Extension, a vigorously meandering free jet.ONR sponsored many of the field programs that are reported on in this study, including grant N00014-12- 1-0445 to MA and grant N00014-10-1-0468 to TBS. Additionally, MA received support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowed Fund for Innovative Research. LC and the drifter work were supported by ONR grant N0001-10-1-0273 and NOAA grant NA10OAR4320156, “The Global Drifter Program.” SJ was sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology, ROC (Taiwan) grant NSC-101-2611-M- 002-018-MY3

Eddy induced Kuroshio intrusions onto the continental shelf of the East China Sea

The Kuroshio is known to intrude onto the continental shelf in the southern East China Sea (ECS) northeast of Taiwan. Two types of intrusions are observed: large and small, depending on how far the Kuroshio penetrates onto the ECS continental shelf, and on the location where it crosses the shelf break. This study demonstrates that cyclonic eddies from the western Pacific induce some of these large Kuroshio intrusions. The large intrusions are identified from more than 20 years of drifter tracks archived in the Global Drifter Program historical database and from weekly and biweekly drifter deployments carried out between April 2008 and September 2009 west of the Green Island (Taiwan). Kuroshio intrusions are observed in all seasons. Cyclonic mesoscale eddies, generated in the Subtropical Countercurrent and North Equatorial Current regions of the northwest Pacific Ocean, propagate westward into the Kuroshio and are well correlated with the observed intrusions. During the intrusions, the mean sea level anomaly computed from AVISO gridded maps shows a well-defined cyclonic circulation southeast of the I-Lan ridge. The mean sea level anomaly also shows the meandering pattern of the Kuroshio when it intrudes onto the continental shelf of the southern East China Sea. The high correlation between the Kuroshio volume transport in the East Taiwan Channel (observed with moorings) and the satellite sea level anomaly permits us to use sea level anomaly as a proxy for the Kuroshio volume transport. When direct transport measurements are not available, this proxy is used to verify that intrusions due to the westward propagating eddies occur when the Kuroshio transport is low. An analytical reduced gravity model of an incident baroclinic current upon a step shelf is used to explain the difference between the large and small intrusions

Multi-Collocation-Based Estimation of Wave Climate in a Non-Tidal Bay: The Case Study of Bagnoli-Coroglio Bay (Tyrrhenian Sea)

In this paper, the advantages of shaping a non-conventional triple collocation-based calibration of a wave propagation model is pointed out. Illustrated through a case study in the Bagnoli-Coroglio Bay (central Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy), a multi-comparison between numerical data and direct measurements have been carried out. The nearshore wave propagation model output has been compared with measurements from an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) and an innovative low-cost drifter-derived GPS-based wave buoy located outside the bay. The triple collocation—buoy, ADCP and virtual numerical point—make possible an implicit validation between instrumentations and between instrumentation and numerical model. The procedure presented here advocates for an alternative “two-step” strategy. Indeed, the triple collocation technique has been used solely to provide a first “rough” calibration of one numerical domain in which the input open boundary has been placed, so that the main wave direction is orthogonally aligned. The need for a fast and sufficiently accurate estimation of wave model parameters (first step) and then an ensemble of five different offshore boundary orientations have been considered, referencing for a more detailed calibration to a short time series of a GPS-buoy installed in the study area (second step). Such a stage involves the introduction of an enhancement factor for the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) dataset, used as input for the model. Finally, validation of the final model’s predictions has been carried out by comparing ADCP measurements in the bay. Despite some limitations, the results reveal that the approach is promising and an excellent correlation can be found, especially in terms of significant wave height