• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.332-350
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• 2019

Zonal hydrographic section measurements at $39.7^{\circ}N$ were conducted between $129.0^{\circ}E$ and $131.3^{\circ}E$ from August 7 to 25 in 2017 using an underwater glider. The glider traveled about 440 km for about 18 days along the 106 line of the regular shipboard measurements in the National Institute of Fishery Science (NIFS) and obtained twice a hydrographic section with high horizontal resolution. Even under the strong East Korea Warm Current with maximum speed of 0.8 m/s across the section, the glider successfully maintained the designated path within an RMS distance of 400 m. By comparing with the NIFS shipboard hydrographic section, it is confirmed that high spatial resolution measurements obtained from a glider were necessary to properly observe front and eddy variability in the East Sea where a typical spatial scale is smaller than the open oceans. From the glider section measurements, a new lens-shaped eddy was found in the thermocline. The lens-shaped anticyclonic eddy had 10~13 km in horizonal width and about 200 m in height like a typical submesoscale eddy resided within the thermocline, which was firstly named as Korea intrathermocline eddy (Keddy). The Keddy has the distinguishing characteristics of a typical intrathermocline eddy, such as a central core with anomalously weak stratification, a convex shaped lens bounded by the stratification anomaly, an interior maximum of velocity at 170 m, no surface appearance of the geopotential field, a small or comparable horizontal width relative to the first baroclinic Rossby radius of deformation, and the Rossby nubmer of 0.7.