• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
• /
• 2004.05b
• /
• pp.89-92
• /
• 2004

Potential vorticity is useful to illustrate mechanism and distribution pattern of current circulation the upper layer in the East Sea is divided into three part following like surface layer, Tsushima Warm Current(TWC) layer. Potential vorticity shows well the meandering of the TWC and polar front and circulation cell ill the northern part of polar front.

• Journal of the korean society of oceanography
• /
• v.38 no.3
• /
• pp.122-134
• /
• 2003

Low-pass filtered time series of wind, coastal temperature, sea level and current were analyzed to understand the coastal upwelling processes in the southeast coast of Korea. Southerly winds favorable for coastal upwelling were dominant in summer of 1997. Total period of four major wind events amounts to 58 days during one hundred days from June to early September. Coastal temperature is most sensitive to variations of wind. The time lag between the onset of southerly (northerly) winds and decrease (increase) of temperature is 3-18 hours. In the frequency domain the coherent bands have periods of 2.4 and 4.0-5.4 days with respective phase lags of 17 and 27-37 hours. Despite the sensitive response, the magnitude of temperature change is not quantitatively proportional to the intensity or duration of the wind, because it depends on the degree of baroclinic tilting of isotherms built dynamically by the strong Tsushima Warm Current (TWC). Current is particularly strong near the coast and has a large vertical shear during the upwelling periods, which is associated with the baroclinic tilting. Both of current and sea level are poorly coherent with wind or temperature except for the period of 4 days.

• Journal of the korean society of oceanography
• /
• v.38 no.3
• /
• pp.143-155
• /
• 2003

Current and sea level were observed in spring 1999 by a bottom mounted ADCP and tide gauge in the central part of the South Sea of Korea. With respect to the front, the distribution of isotherms is prograde in the offshore region whereas that of isohalines is retrograde, especially in the coastal area. The combined effect results in shoaling of isopycnals at the front. This distribution corresponds to a westward coastal flow on the northern side of the front and the eastward Tsushima Warm Current (TWC) to the south, determined by vessel-mounted ADCP observations. The low-frequency current shows either alternating clockwise-counterclockwise rotation or else persistent eastward motion depending on the frontal motion. Fluctuations of wind, sea level and current are coherent at period of 3-4 days and show some characteristics of Ekman-like dynamics.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.120-135
• /
• 1996

The characteristics and fluctuations of structures and spatial distributions of thermal fronts and warm eddy in the Southeastern part of the East sea are discussed based on the data collected by the Naval Academy, Korea during Feb. 6-9, May 9-19 and Oct. 12-18, 1995. The thermal fronts existed very often at the sea off the Pohang-Ulsan, The generation of the thermal front is related with the development of the North Korea Cold Current. The warm eddy is located in the central part of the Ulleung basin where the local depth exceeds 1500m. This warm eddy is a major contributor to mass transport in the northern part of the East Sea. It is evident that knowledge of warm eddy is important in understanding the circulation in the western part of the East Sea.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
• /
• v.22 no.4
• /
• pp.151-171
• /
• 2017

Most of oceanic current maps in the secondary school science and earth science textbooks have been made on the base of extensive in-situ measurements conducted by Japanese oceanographers during 1930s. According to up-to-date scientific knowledge on the currents in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea (YES), such maps have significant errors and are likely to cause misconceptions to students, thus new schematic map of ocean currents is needed. The currents in the YES change seasonally due to relatively shallow water depths, complex terrain, winds, and tides. These factors make it difficult to construct a unified ocean current map of the YES. Sixteen major items, such as the flow of the Kuroshio Current into the East China Sea and its northward path, the origin of the Tsushima Warm Current and its path into the Korea Strait, the path of Taiwan Warm Current, the Jeju Warm Current, the runoff pattern of the Yangtze River flow, the routes of the northward Yellow Sea Warm Current, the Chinese Coastal Current, and the West Korea Coastal Current off the west coast of the Korean Peninsula, were selected to produce the schematic current map. Review of previous scientific researches, in-depth discussions through academic conferences, expert discussions, and consultations for three years since 2014 enabled us to produce the final ocean current maps for the YES after many revisions. Considering the complexity of the ocean currents, we made seven ocean current maps: two representative current patterns in summer and winter, seasonal current maps for upper layer and lower layer in summer and winter, and one representative surface current map. It is expected that the representative maps of the YES, connected to the current maps of the East Sea and the Northwest Pacific Ocean, would be widely utilized for diverse purposes in the secondary-school textbooks as well as high-level educational purposes and even for scientific scholarly experts.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
• /
• v.27 no.5
• /
• pp.583-593
• /
• 1994

The East Korean Warm Current is known as an anticyclonic circulation in the Ulreung Basin in the southwestern East Sea of Korea. This circulation was approximately estimated by dynamic methods based on the oceanographic observation and remote sensing data. In this study, the existence of circulation in the anticyclonic region of East Korean Warm Current(Tsushima current) in early summer was directly measured by drogue tracking using a global positioning system. At the same time, the velocity was calculated by dynamic method and compared using data collected by remote sensing. As results, these values are shown to be nearly the same, and an anticyclonic circulation was found around Ulreungdo-Tokto. The maximum northward and southward flow speed was deduced to be around 0.6 and one knot, respectively.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Fisheries Technology Conference
• /
• 2001.05a
• /
• pp.242-243
• /
• 2001

Tsushima Warm Current(WD entering into the East Sea through the Korean Strait flows northeastward and during this travel it shows complicated movement like meandering and eddy. It is considered that these variations of TWC are important causes making water masses unstable and also have influence on biological and chemical properties of water masses. Lee and Cho(2000) suggested that meandering of TWC in adjacent waters of Noto peninsula has much influence on fluctuation of current structure. (omitted)

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
• /
• v.24 no.2
• /
• pp.318-331
• /
• 2019

In this study, comparative analysis is performed on the long-term persisted warm eddies that were generated in 2003 (WE03) and in 2014 (WE14) over the East Sea using the HYCOM reanalysis data. The overshooting of the East Korea Warm Current (EKWC) was appeared during the formation period of those warm eddies. The warm eddies were produced in the shallow Korea Plateau region through the interaction of the EKWC and the sub-polar front. In the interior of the both warm eddies, a homogeneous water mass of about $13^{\circ}C$ and 34.1 psu were generated over the upper 150 m depth by the winter mixing. In 2004, the next year of the generation of the WE03, the amount of the inflow through the western channel of the Korea Strait was larger, while the inflow was lesser than its climatology during 2015 corresponding to the development period of the WE14. The above results suggest that the heat and salt are supplied in the warm eddies through the Tsushima Warm Current (TWC), however the amount of the inflow through the Korea Strait has negligible impact on the long-term persistency of the warm eddies. Both of the warm eddies were maintained more than 18 months near Ulleung island, while they have no common feature on the pathways. In the vicinity of the Ulleung basin, large and small eddies are continuously created due to the meandering of the EKWC. The long-term persisted warm eddies in the Ulleung Island seem to be the results of the interaction between the pre-existed eddies located south of the sub-polar front and fresh eddies induced by the meanderings of the EKWC. The conclusion is also in line with the fact that the long-term persisted warm eddies were not always created when the overshooting of the EKWC was appeared.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
• /
• v.2
• /
• pp.816-819
• /
• 2006

One of the most difficult parameters to measure in the sea is current speed and direction. Recently, efforts are being made to estimate the ocean current vectors by utilizing sequential satellite imageries. In this study, we attempted to estimated sea surface current vector (sscv) by using satellite ocean color imageries of SeaWifs around the Korean Peninsula. This ocean color image data has 1-day sampling interval and spatial resolution of 1x1 km. Maximum cross-correlation method is employed which is aimed to detect similar patterns between sequential images. The estimated current vectors are compared to the surface geostrophic current vectors obtained from altimeter of sea level height data. In utilizing the color imagery data, some limitations and drawbacks exist so that in warm water region where phytoplankton concentration is relatively lower than in cold water region, estimation of sscv is poor and unreliable. On the other hand, two current vector fields agree reasonably well in the Korean South Sea region where high concentration of chlorophyll-a and weak tide is observed. In the future, with ocean color images of shorter sampling interval by COMS satellite, the algorithm and methodology developed in the study would be useful in providing the information for the ocean current around Korean Peninsula.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.141-148
• /
• 2008

In order to investigate the effect of inflow of Yangze river on the distribution of chlorophyll-${\alpha}$, the results of serial oceanographic observation during 2000-2005 were used. The oceanographic conditions in the northern East China Sea is influenced by the Tsushima Warm Current and low saline water derived from the Yangze river. The distributions of these water masses vary significantly by the season in the northern East China Sea. The sea surface temperature and salinity were stable and concentrations of chlorophyll-${\alpha}$ were low in the eastern part of $126^{\circ}E$. On the contrary, the salinity was significantly influenced by the low saline water derived from Yangze river with the high concentrations of chlorophyll-${\alpha}$. It is suggested that the low saline water inflowed from the Yangze river affects high concentrations of chlorophyll-${\alpha}$ in the northern East China Sea in summer.