Analysis on the Evolution and Seasonal Variation of the Ulleung Warm Eddy

Abstract

The Ulleung Warm Eddy (UWE) is a semi-permanent eddy, which has a very important impact on material transport in the Japan Sea, so we use aviso(Archiving, Validation and Interpretation of Satellite Oceanographic data) data and ARM3D data to analyze the seasonal variation of UWE that appeared in a total of 28 years from 1993 to 2020. We also analyze the evolution of the UWE that appears in 2019, and found that the eddies merging (splitting) can cause sudden increases (drops) in the nature of UWE. Seasonally, UWE’s area and eddy amplitude are strong in winter and spring, and weak in summer and autumn. The Tsushima Current (TC) has an important influence on UWE. The stronger (weaker) flow of TC, the weaker (stronger) the area and eddy amplitude of UWE.