COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MESOSCALE EDDIES IN THE NORTHWEST PACIFIC OCEAN

Abstract

In this paper, satellite remote sensing data are used to study two typical sea areas in the Northwest Pacific: The eddy in Kuroshio Extension (KE) and Subtropical Counter current (STCC) is statistically analyzed, including its basic characteristics, spatial distribution and propagation characteristics, and its seasonal and interannual variations are analyzed. Through comparison, it is found that the eddy characteristics of the two sea areas are quite different. Instead of keeping data such as Argo (Array for Real-time G-costrophic Oceanography), the vertical structure characteristics of eddies in the two sea areas (zone A and Zone B) were analyzed and compared. The results show that the potential temperature anomaly and salinity anomaly of the eddies in area A are smaller than those in area B, which presents opposite characteristics to the potential density anomaly.