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Modeling low salinity waters along the coast around Japan using a high-resolution river discharge dataset

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Abstract

The effect of river runoff on the salinity distribution in the coastal regions of Japan is investigated with a nested-grid model system. High-resolution river runoff data calculated by a hydrological cycle model are used in this study. Freshwater fluxes from rivers result in extremely low salinity waters along the coast of Japan. Fixed line observations conducted by prefectural fisheries research institutes show that such low salinity waters also exist in the real ocean. The use of the river runoff data noted above leads to reduction in root mean square errors (RMSEs) of sea surface salinity between observational data and the model result. The model experiments also show that freshwater inputs from large rivers can affect the salinity distribution far away from their mouths, which suggests that we should care about such rivers far away from the area of interest as well as local rivers. The experiment with runoff from non-Class-A rivers shows the smaller RMSE than the experiment without river runoff. Such small rivers also contribute a lot to improving reproducibility of the salinity distribution in the coastal areas. These results clearly show that precise data for river discharge are essential for realistic coastal modeling.

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Acknowledgments

The authors appreciate thoughtful and constructive comments from two anonymous reviewers, which significantly improve the quality of this paper. This study is supported by Tohoku Ecosystem-Associated Marine Sciences from Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan. The numerical experiments are conducted using the Fujitsu PRIMEHPC FX10 System (Oakleaf-FX, Oakbridge) in the Information Technology Center, the University of Tokyo. Authors would like to express heartfelt respects and gratitude to all public research institutes, including two institutes and one center cited in the text, which manage fixed line observation in the coastal regions of Japan.

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  1. L. Shogo Urakawa

    Present address: Oceanography and Geochemistry Research Department, Meteorological Research Institute, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0052, Japan

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba, 277-8568, Japan

    L. Shogo Urakawa, Kei Yoshimura & Hiroyasu Hasumi

  2. Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokohama, Kanagawa, 236-0001, Japan

    Masao Kurogi

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  1. L. Shogo Urakawa
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Correspondence to L. Shogo Urakawa.

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Urakawa, L.S., Kurogi, M., Yoshimura, K. et al. Modeling low salinity waters along the coast around Japan using a high-resolution river discharge dataset. J Oceanogr 71, 715–739 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-015-0314-4

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