• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.189-194
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• 2013

In this study, the patterns of barotropic vortices and their structural rotation were investigated through laboratory experiments. Both stable and unstable barotropic vortices were formed in a rotating water tank with a rotating circular plate depending on the diameter, direction, and speed of rotating circular plate. The patterns of stable vortices turned out to be tripolar, triangular, rectangular, and monopolar vortex. These vortex patterns were affected by the gap between the circular plate and the wall of the water tank. Many unstable vortices were formed by anticyclonically and highly rotating circular plate. These results were caused by the centrifugal instability. The structural angular velocity of the tripolar vortex increased with the tangential velocity of the circular plate. The anticyclonic tripolar vortex had higher structural angular velocity than the cyclonic vortex. The tripolar vortex in the water tank was very similar with the real oceanic tripolar vortex from the view point of the Rossby number and the structural rotation.

• 한국해양학회지
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.152-163
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• 1994

The characteristics and fluctuations of structures and spatial distributions of warm eddies (anticyclonic eddies) in the southwestern part of the East Sea (the Japan Sea) are discussed based on the data gathered y the Fisheries Research and Development Agency, Korea from 1967 to 1968. The warm eddies existed very often in the southwest of the Ullung Island. The warm eddies are elliptical in shape and the mean size is about 130 km in diameter. Bimonthly distributions of warm eddies, the largest value of observed frequency and diameter in August and the least in June, indicate that the generation of the warm eddy is related with the development of the East Korean Warm Current. The warm eddies move west, north or southward with 0.80∼2.50 cm/sec or stay over a few months at the same place southwest of the Ullung Island. Movement of warm eddies may be influenced by the neighboring currents, the Rossby wave and the topography. The relationship between the position of warm eddies and the bottom topography suggests that the development and the movement of warm eddies are controlled by the Ullung Basin. The warm eddies should be divided into two groups. One group is the shallow warm eddy with strong baroclinic characteristics and the other is the deep one with strong Barotropic characteristics. The shallow group seems to be closely related with positive values (in summer) of the sea level difference between Pusan and Mozi (the Tsushima Current), while the deep group has no relation with that.

• 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.