• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.298-317
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• 2019

The physical characteristics of the Ulleung Warm Eddy (UWE) and its relationship with the East Korea Warm Current (EKWC) were analyzed using the CMEMS (Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service) satellite altimetry data and the CTD data of the National Institute of Fisheries Science (NIFS) near the Ulleung Basin from 1993 to 2017. The distribution of the UWEs coupled with EKWC accounts for 81% of the total number of the UWEs. Only 7% of the total eddies are completely separated from the EKWC. The UWE has the characteristics of high temperature and high salinity water inside of it when it is formed from the EKWC. However, when the UWE is wintering, its internal structure changes greatly. In the winter, surface homogeneous layer of $10^{\circ}C$ and 34.2 psu inside of the UWE is produced by vertical convection from sea-surface cooling, and deepened to a maximum depth of approximately 250 m in early spring. In summer, the UWE changes into a structure with a stratified structure in the upper layer within a depth of 100 m and a homogeneous layer made in winter in the lower layer. 62 UWEs were produced for 25 years from 1993 to 2017. on average, 2.5 UWEs were formed annually, and the average life span was 259 days (approximately 8.6 months). The average size of the UWEs is 98 km in the east-west direction and 109 km in the north-south direction. The average size of UWE using satellite altimetric data is estimated to be 1~25 km smaller than that using water temperature cross-sectional data.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.170-179
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• 1999

The SUS (Signal, Underwater Sound)-OAT experiment was carried out in the Ulleung Basin of the East Sea on 3 June 1997. The SUS-OAT system consisted of aircraft deployed shots as sources and a vertical line array (VLA) tethered by a receiver ship was used to survey a large area where a mesoscale warm eddy appears frequently. The experiment was carried out such that explosive charges set to detonate at 800 ft depth were dropped in a rectangular ($120{\times}120$ km). Sources were a rapidly deployable SUS charge (MK 61 MOD 0), and receiver is a fixed VLA, 90 m in length (150-240 m in receiver depth), composed of 10 elements equally spaced. The reference ray paths are computed by range-dependent acoustic model in canonical ocean based on the historical data. The singular value decomposition (SVD) method is used to obtain the horizontal perturbation of the temperature fields. Horizontal distributions of temperature fields at 150 m and 200 m depth show a weak warm eddy observed by AXBT and the inversely estimated temperature shows similar patterns in terms of the location of the warm eddy. In conclusion, the SUS-OAT experiment has been successful to estimate the position of warm eddy and its temperature field in the East Sea of Korea.

• 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.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.99-108
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• 2014

One year long time-series current data were obtained at two stations (K1 and K2) located in the Usan Trough in the area north of Ulleungdo in the East Sea from September 2006. The observed data reveal enhanced seafloor flows in both stations with variabilities of about 20 days which is possibly governed by the topographic Rossby wave. After February 2007, strong flow in the upper layer in St. K1 appears throughout the mooring period and this is due to the passage of the warm eddy comparing with satellite sea surface temperature data. During this period, no significant correlation between the current in the upper layer and those in two deep layers is shown indicating the eddy does not affect flows in the deep ocean. It is also observed that the flow direction rotates clockwise with depth in both stations except for the upper of the K1. This implies that the deep flow does not parallel to the isobaths exactly and it has a downwelling velocity component. The possibility of the flow from the Japan Basin to the Ulleung Basin across the Usan Trough is not evidenced from the data.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.269-289
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• 2010

In Summer 2008, a multidisciplinary survey was conducted onboard R/V Haeyang 2000 to understand plankton response to the three distinct physico-chemical settings that developed in the Ulleung Basin of the East Sea. Baseline settings of hydrographic conditions included the presence of the thin (<20 m) Tsushima Surface Water (TSW) on top of the Tsushima Middle Water (TMW). It extends from the Korea Strait to $37^{\circ}N$ along the $130^{\circ}E$ and then turns offshore and encompasses the relatively saline (T>$26^{\circ}C$, S>33.7) Ulleung Warm Eddy surface water centered at $36.5^{\circ}N$ and $131^{\circ}E$. A relatively colder and saline water mass appeared off the southeastern coast of Korea. It was accompanied by higher nutrient and chlorophyll-a concentrations, suggesting a coastal upwelling. Most of the offshore surface waters support low phytoplankton biomass (0.3 mg chl-a $m^{-3}$). A much denser phytoplankton biomass (1-2.3 mg $m^{-3}$) accumulated at the subsurface layer between 20-50 m depth. The subsurface chlorophyll-a maximum (SCM) layer was closely related to the nutricline, suggesting an active growth of phytoplankton at depth. The SCM developed at shallow depth (20-30 m) near the coast and deepened offshore (50-60 m). A fucoxanthin/zeaxanthin ratio was high in coastal waters while it was low in offshore waters, which indicated that diatoms dominate coastal waters while cyanobacteria dominate offshore waters. The community structure and biomass of phytoplanktonare closely related to nitrogen availability. Zooplankton biomass was higher in the coastal region than in the offshore region while species richness showed an opposite trend. Zooplankton community structure retained a coastal/offshore contrast. These suggest that summer hydrography is a stable structure, lasting long enough to allow a hydrography-specific plankton community to evolve.