Estimation of the Residence Time for Renewal of the East Sea Intermediate Water using MICOM

Miami Isopycnic Coordinate Ocean Model is applied to the East Sea to estimate the renewal time of the upper Intermediate Water The model gives about 10 years of renewal time. Extrapolating this result to the whole water mass below, including the upper Intermediate Water, leads to about 81.4 years of renewal time, which is quite comparable to that obtained by Kim and Kim (1997) based on the recent observations. Deep winter mixing occurs in the north of the basin. The areas of the largest water mass conversion, from the upper mixed to the intermediate below, are along the periphery of the deep mixing zone. Large portion of the renewed Intermediate Water then advects along the Korean and Japanese coasts. It is concluded that the high-oxygen content Intermediate Water found off the Korean coast (Kim and Chung, 1984) is in part locally formed but mostly advected from the deep mixing zone.