Role of the California undercurrent in the export of denitrified waters from the eastern tropical North Pacific

A transect off Point Sur, California (36 degrees 20'N), was occuplied bimonthly from April 1988 to May 1990 to resolve spatial and temporal patterns in the physics and chemistry of the California Current System. Alongshore velocity fields and the chemical parameter N* [Gruber and Sarmiento, 1997] show coherence. Subartic waters, conveyed by the California Current (CC), were characterized by high N* values, which in the region of poleward flow of the California Undercurrent (CU) a minimum of N* (N* <-5 umolkg-1) was observed