Abstract
Empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis was applied to a 50-year long time series of monthly mean positions of the Kuroshio path south of Japan from a regional reanalysis. Three leading EOF modes characterize the contributions from three typical paths of the Kuroshio meander: the typical large meander path, the offshore non-large meander path, and the nearshore non-large meander path, respectively. Accordingly, the spatial variation characteristics of oceanic anomaly fields can be depicted by their regression fields upon the associated three leading principal components (PCs), which are well-matched with the results of composite analysis corresponding to each period of the three typical Kuroshio paths. A new index for the typical large meander is defined by using the second leading PC, which is highly correlated with the Kushimoto-Uragami index. Spectral analysis of this new index series shows variability of the Kuroshio path south of Japan at time scales of about 7–8 years and 20 years.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the Copernicus Marine and Environment Monitoring Service for providing the ADT data (resources.marine.copernicus.eu/?option=com_csw&task=results), the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level for providing the monthly mean sea level data of Kushimoto and Uragami (wwww.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/), and the Japan Meteorological Agency for providing monthly time series of the southernmost latitude of the Kuroshio path between 136°E and 140°E (www.data.jma.go.jp/kaiy-ou/data/shindan/b_2/kuroshio_stream/kuro_slat.txt). We also thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments to improve the quality of this paper.
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The National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract No. 41876014.
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Wu, X., Zhao, Y., Han, G. et al. Temporal-spatial oceanic variation in relation with the three typical Kuroshio paths south of Japan. Acta Oceanol. Sin. 41, 15–25 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-021-1941-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-021-1941-9