Abstract
We used satellite altimetry data to investigate the Kuroshio Current because of the higher resolution and wider range of observations. In previous studies, satellite absolute geostrophic velocities were used to study the spatio-temporal variability of the sea surface velocity field along the current, and extraction methods were employed to detect the Kuroshio axes and paths. However, sea surface absolute geostrophic velocity estimated from absolute dynamic topography should be regarded as the geostrophic component of the actual surface velocity, which cannot represent a sea surface current accurately. In this study, mathematical verification between the climatic absolute geostrophic and bin-averaged drifting buoy velocity was established and then adopted to correct the satellite absolute geostrophic velocities. There were some differences in the characteristics between satellite geostrophic and drifting buoy velocities. As a result, the corrected satellite absolute geostrophic velocities were used to detect the Kuroshio axis and path based on a principal-component detection scheme. The results showed that the detection of the Kuroshio axes and paths from corrected absolute geostrophic velocities performed better than those from satellite absolute geostrophic velocities and surface current estimations. The corrected satellite absolute geostrophic velocity may therefore contribute to more precise day-to-day detection of the Kuroshio Current axis and path.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the anonymous reviewers for their careful reviews and constructive comments in improving the original manuscript, and the editors who kindly polished this article with great effort. The merged AGV remote sensing data were provided by CMEMS, and can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.aviso.altimetry.fr/. The QuikSCAT wind data were processed and distributed by the Centre ERS d’Archivage et de Traitement (CERSAT) and can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.ifremer.fr/ifre-mer/cersat/products/gridded/MWF/L3/QuikSCAT/Daily. The Interim surface wave data sets can be downloaded from the ECMWF link: http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/interim-full-daily/. The GIS data of the streamlines from the Hydrographic and Oceanographic Department of Japan can be downloaded from http://wwwl.kaiho.mlit.go.jp/KANKYO/KAIYO/qboc/kur-osio-num.html. We also thank Kara Bogus, from Liwen Bianji, Edanz Editing China (http://www.liwenbianji.cn/ac), for editing the English text of a draft of this manuscript.
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Foundation item: The National Science and Technology Major Project of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China under contract No. 2018YFF01014100; the National Programme on Global Change and Air-Sea Interaction under contract No. GASI-IPOVAI-01-05; the NSFC-Shandong Joint Fund for Marine Science Research Centers under contract No. U1606405.
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Zhuang, Z., Hui, Z., Yang, G. et al. Principal-component estimates of the Kuroshio Current axis and path based on the mathematical verification between satellite altimeter and drifting buoy data. Acta Oceanol. Sin. 39, 14–24 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-019-1523-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-019-1523-2