• Proceedings of the Korea Committee for Ocean Resources and Engineering Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.103-107
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• 2001

The major studies of an ocean circulation of the East/Japan Sea related to evaluate the feasibility and utilization of deep ocean water are reviewed. The major feature of surface current system of the East/Japan Sea is an inflow of the Tsushima Warm Current through the Korea/Tsushima Strait and the outflow through the Tsugaru and Soya Straits. The Tsushima Warm Current has been known to split into two or three branches in the southern region of the East/Japan Sea. In the cold water region of the East/Japan Sea, the North Korean Cold Current turns to the east near 39$^{\circ}$N after meeting the East Korean Warm Current, then flows eastward. The degree of penetration depends on the strength of the positive wind stress curl, according to the ventilation theory. Various current meter moorings indicate strong and oscillatory deep currents in various parts of the basin. According to some numerical experiments, these currents may be induced by pressure-topography or eddy-topography interaction. However, more investigations are needed to explain clearly the presence of these strong bottom currents. This study concludes the importance of topographical coupling, isopycnal outcropping, different wind forcing and the branching of the Tsushima Warm Current on the circulation of the East/Japan Sea.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.287-302
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• 2003

The seasonal variations in the circulation of the water mass in the East Sea/Japan Sea have been simulated using a free surface primitive ocean model, RIAMOM (RIAM Ocean Model), comparing the results from GFDL-MOM1 (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Modular Ocean Model, version 1.1, hereafter MOM) with the GDEM (Generalized Digital Environmental Model) data. Both models appear to successfully reproduce the distinct features of circulation in the East Sea/Japan Sea, such as the NB (Nearshore Branch) flowing along the Japanese coast, the EKWC (East Korean Warm Current) flowing northward along the Korean coast, and the NKCC/LCC (North Korean Cold Current/Liman Cold Current) flowing southwestward along Korean/Russian coast. RIAMOM has shown better performance, compared to MOM, in terms of the realistic simulation of the flow field in the East Sea/Japan Sea; RIAMOM has produced more rectified flows on the coastal region, for example, the narrower and stronger NKCC/LCC than MOM has. There is however obvious differences between the model results and the GDEM data in terms of the calculation of the water mass; both models have shown a tendency to overpredict temperature and underpredict salinity below 50m; more diffusive forms of thermocline and halocline have been simulated than noted in GDEM data.

• Journal of the korean society of oceanography
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.161-169
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• 2000

A seasonal circulation in the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea and its possible cause have been studied with CSK data during 1965-1989. Water mass distributions are clear in winter, but not in summer because the upper layer waters are quite influenced by atmosphere. To solve the problem, a water mass analysis by mixing ratio is used for the lower layer waters. The results show that the distribution of Tsushima Warm Current Water expands to the Yellow Sea in winter and retreats to the East China Sea in summer. It means that there is a very slow seasonal circulation between the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea: Tsushima Warm Current Water flows into the Yellow Sea in winter and coastal water flows out of the Yellow Sea in summer. By the circulation, the front between Tsushima Warm Current Water and coastal water moves toward the shelf break in summer so that the flow is faster in the deeper region. The process eventually makes the transport in the Korea Strait increase. The Kuroshio does not seem to influence the process. A possible mechanism of the process is the seasonal change of sea surface slope due to different local effects of surface heating and diluting between the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.171-179
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• 2013

The long-term variability of sea surface temperature in the East China Sea was reviewed based mainly on published literatures. Though the quantitative results are not the same, it is generally shown that sea surface temperature is increasing especially in recent years with the rate of increase about $0.03^{\circ}C$/year. Other meaningful results presented in the literatures is that the difference of water properties between layers upper and lower than the thermocline in summer shows an increasing trend both in temperature and salinity, suggesting that the stratification has been intensified. As a mechanism by which to evaluate the wintertime warming trend in the region, the weakening of wind strength, which is related to the variation of sea level pressure and atmospheric circulation in the western North Pacific and northern Asian continent, is suggested in the most of related studies.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.287-296
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• 2012

In the theory of source-driven abyssal circulation, the forcing is usually assumed to be steady source (deep-water formation). In many cases, however, the deep-water formation occurs instantaneously and it is not clear whether the theory can be applied well in this case. An attempt is made to resolve this problem by using a simple reduced gravity model. The model basin has large depth change compared for its size, like the East Sea, such that isobaths nearly coincide with geostrophic contours. Deep-water is formed every year impulsively and flows into the model basin through the boundary. It is found that the circulation driven by the impulsive source is generally the same as that driven by a steady source except that the former has a seasonal fluctuation associated with unsteadiness of forcing. The magnitudes of both the annual average and seasonal fluctuations increase with the rate of deep-water formation. The problem can be approximated to that of linear diffusion of momentum with boundary flux, which well demonstrates the essential feature of abyssal circulation spun-up by periodic impulsive source. Although the model greatly idealizes the real situation, it suggests that abyssal circulation can be driven by a periodic impulsive source in the East Sea.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.161-172
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• 2001

A model-to-model comparison is attempted between Princeton Ocean Model (POM) and Miami Isopycnic Coordinate Ocean Model (MICOM) as a first step to extend our knowledge of models' performances in studying the East Sea circulation. The two models have fundamentally different numerical schemes and boundary conditions imposed on these models are not exactly the same each other. This study indicates that MICOM has a critical weak point in that it does not reproduce the shallow surface currents properly while it handles the thermohaline processes and associated movements of intermediate and deep waters efficiently. It is suggested that the mixed layer scheme needs to be modified so that it can match with inflow boundary conditions in order to reproduce the surface currents properly in MICOM. POM reproduces the surface current pattern better than MICOM, although the surface currents in POM appear to undergo the unrealistic seasonal variation and have exaggeratedly large vertical scale. These defects seem to arise during the process of adapting POM to the East Sea, and removing these defects is left as a future task.

• Journal of the korean society of oceanography
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.187-195
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• 2002

The characteristics of surface circulation in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea are discussed by analyzing a great deal of current data observed by 142 sets of mooring buoy and 58 sets of drifters trajectories collected in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea through domestic and abroad measurements. Some major features are demonstrated as bellow: 1) Tsushima Warm Current flows away from the Kuroshio and has multiple sources in warm half year and comes only from Kuroshio surface water in cold half year. 2) Taiwan Warm Current comes mainly from the Taiwan Strait Water in warm half year and comes from the intruded Kuroshio surface water and branches near 27N in cold half year. 3) The Changjiang Diluted Water turns towards Cheju Island in summer and flows southward along the coastal line in winter. 4) The study sea area is an eddy developing area, especially in the southern area of Cheju Island and northern area of Taiwan.

• Proceedings of the Korean Association of Geographic Inforamtion Studies Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.108-111
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• 2003

Altimeter data from the Topex/Poseidon (T/P) were analyzed to study the sea surface circulation and its variability in the North East Asian Seas. Long term averaged T/P sea level time series data where compared with in situ sea level measurements from a float-operated type tide gauge around of south Korea and Japan. Tf data are a large contaminated by 60-day tidal aliasing effect, very near the alias periods of M2 and S2. When this 60-day effect is removed, the data agree well with the tide gauge data with 4.6 cm averaged RMS difference. The T/P derived sea level variability reveals clearly the well-known, strong current-topography such as Kuroshio. The T/P mean sea level of North Pacific (NP) was higher than Yellow Sea (YS) and East Sea (ES). The T/P sea level variability, with strong eddy and meandering, was the largest in eastern part of Japan and this variability was mainly due to the influence of bottom topography in Kuroshio Extension area.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.431-444
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• 2012

We simulated and compared present and future ocean circulation in the East China Sea using an East Asia Regional Ocean model. Mean climate states for 1990~1999 and 2030~2039 were used as surface conditions for simulations of present and future ocean circulation, which were derived from the simulations of three different global climate models, ECHAM5-MPI, GFDL-CM2.0 and MIROC3.2_hires, for the 20th century and those of 21st century as projected by the IPCC SRES A1B. East Asia Regional Ocean model simulated the detailed patterns of temperature, salinity and current fields under present and future climate conditions and their changes instead of the simple structures of global climate models. To some extent, there are consistent ocean circulation changes derived from the three pairs corresponding to the global climate model in so much as the temperature increases not only in winter but summer at both the surface and bottom and that temperature and salinity changes are prominent near the Chinese coast and in the Changjiang bank. However, the simulated circulations are different among each other depending on the prescribed atmospheric conditions not only under present climate but also with regard to future climate conditions. There is not a coincident tendency in ocean circulation changes between present and future simulations derived from the three pairs. This suggests that more simulations with different pairs are needed.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.271-286
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• 2016

We evaluate the temperature and salinity fields in the East Sea reproduced by the global ocean reanalysis data using HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM for short). Temporal correlation of Sea Surface Temperature (SST) change between HYCOM and the Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (GHRSST) are higher in summer than winter. Though distributions of temperature and salinity in the HYCOM are similar to those from historical data (World Ocean Atlas 2013 V2), salinity in the HYCOM is lower (highter) in the region where the salinity is high (low). Temperature fields in the Ulleung basin of HYCOM are quite similar to those derived from Pressure-recording Inverted Echo Sounder (PIES), such as the correlation coefficient is higher than 0.7. This indicates that the HYCOM represents well the circulation and meso-scale phenomena in the Ulleung basin.