Kuroshio Transport East of Taiwan and the Effect of Mesoscale Eddies

Abstract

Abstract : To determine the time-varying Kuroshio transport and velocity structure east of Taiwan, in situ measurements were collected with moorings deployed for 2 years. This work was carried out as a collaboration between the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and National Taiwan University (NTU), whose companion projects were funded by the Taiwanese National Science Council (now the Ministry of Science and Technology, MOST). The long-term goal of this project is to improve understanding and predictability of the regional circulation in the western North Pacific. The objective of this project is to characterize variability in the Kuroshio east of Taiwan and to understand (1) how this variability is related to variability in the upstream region, where the North Equatorial Current bifurcates forming the northward-flowing Kuroshio and the southward-flowing Mindanao Current and (2) how westward-propagating mesoscale eddies that arrive east of Taiwan from the ocean interior affect Kuroshio variability. This will establish the advective versus the eddy-driven contributions to Kuroshio variability east of Taiwan.