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A new climatology of the Okhotsk Sea derived from the FERHRI database

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Abstract

This paper introduces a new hydrographic climatology of the Okhotsk Sea; this climatology was constructed from the Far Eastern Regional Hydrometeorological Research Institute (FERHRI) database. The FERHRI database has a volume of data three to five times larger than the data used in previous studies because unpublished Russian observation data have been included in the FERHRI database. After removing erroneous data from the database by pertinent quality control methods, the climatology for 1/4° × 1/4° grids is produced by applying objective analysis procedures. Features similar to those in previous studies are seen in the intermediate layers in the Okhotsk Sea, whereas our climatology provides values that fill in gaps in previous climatologies. It is obvious from the monthly climatologies that temperature and salinity distributions evolve in accordance with seasonal variations in the Eastern Sakhalin Current and inflow from the North Pacific. We also reconstructed climatologies for the winter mixed layer and dense shelf water from data obtained from the temperature minimum waters identified as the remnants of these two layers. Free access to the 1° × 1° versions of all climatologies constructed in this study is available through the website.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge valuable discussions on several points in this study with members of the Ocean and Sea Ice Dynamics Group, Atmosphere–Ocean Interaction Research Group, and Pan-Okhotsk Research Center at Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University. The comments of Prof. T. Hibiya and two anonymous reviewers were extremely helpful in the revisions of the manuscript. All figures are drawn by Generic Mapping Tool (GMT). NOAA OI SST v2 is provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, CO, USA, from their website at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd. This study is supported by New Energy and Industrial Technology Development (NEDO), Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas, and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 24510004.

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  1. Tsuneo Ono

    Present address: National Research Institute of Fisheries Science, Fisheries Research Agency, 2-12-4 Fukuura, Kanazawa, Yokohama, 236-8648, Japan

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University, Kita-19, Nishi-8, Kitaku, Sapporo, 060-0819, Japan

    Hiroki Uehara, Tomohiro Nakamura & Humio Mitsudera

  2. Far Eastern Regional Hydrometeorological Research Institute, 24, Fontannaya St., Vladivostok, 690990, Russia

    Andrey A. Kruts & Yuriy N. Volkov

  3. Hokkaido National Fisheries Research Institute, Fisheries Research Agency, 116 Katsurakoi, Kushio, 085-0802, Japan

    Tsuneo Ono

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  1. Hiroki Uehara
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  2. Andrey A. Kruts
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  4. Tomohiro Nakamura
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Correspondence to Hiroki Uehara.

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Uehara, H., Kruts, A.A., Volkov, Y.N. et al. A new climatology of the Okhotsk Sea derived from the FERHRI database. J Oceanogr 68, 869–886 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-012-0147-3

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