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Relationship between the path of the Kuroshio in the south of Japan and the path of the Kuroshio Extension in the east

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Abstract

A relationship between paths of the Kuroshio and Kuroshio Extension (KE) is investigated, using the satellite-derived altimetry dataset of 1993–2008. When the Kuroshio takes the nearshore nonlarge meander path or typical large meander path and resultantly goes through the deeper channel (about 2500 m) of the Izu-Ogasawara Ridge, the KE path adopts a relatively stable state with the two quasi-stationary meanders. On the other hand, when the Kuroshio takes the offshore nonlarge meander path and then passes over the shallower part of the Ridge (about 1000 m), the KE path tends to be convoluted, i.e., an unstable state.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to express their sincere thanks to the members of Physical Oceanography Group at Tohoku University for their useful discussion. Comments from three anonymous reviewers were particularly helpful for improving our manuscript. The first author (SS) was partly supported by the Sasakawa Scientific Research Grant from the Japan Science Society (No. 23–701) and by the Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) (No. 23740348) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (No. 23106501), “A ‘hot spot’ in the climate system: extra-tropical air-sea interaction under the East Asian monsoon system” from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The second author (KH) was financially supported by the Japan Fisheries Agency.

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Correspondence to Shusaku Sugimoto.

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Sugimoto, S., Hanawa, K. Relationship between the path of the Kuroshio in the south of Japan and the path of the Kuroshio Extension in the east. J Oceanogr 68, 219–225 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-011-0089-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-011-0089-1

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