Relative transport in the Alaskan Stream in winter

Lagrangian measurements in the Kamchatka Current and Oyashio

“…The Kamchatka Current (Verkhunov and Tkachenko, 1992), the southward flowing western boundary current, is the major outflow from the Bering Sea (Takenouti and Ohtani, 1974). South of ~50°N, we call the southward flow the Oyashio in general agreement with Ohtani (1970). There is exchange of water between the Kamchatka Current-Oyashio system and the Okhotsk Sea (Kitani, 1973), but net transports appear to be small (probably <2 × 10 6 m 3 s -1 ; Kurashina et al, 1967).…”

“…Although an earlier view was that the Oyashio is a combination of water from the Kamchatka Current and the Okhotsk Sea, Ohtani (1970) concluded that it is mainly of Kamchatka Current origin. From the buoy trajectories presented here, there is little evidence that there is a large influx of near surface (<50 m) waters from the Oyashio into the Okhotsk Sea.…”

“…We suspect that much of the variation in transport of the Kamchatka Current in the Bering Sea results from variations of the Alaskan Stream inflow through Near Strait (Reed and Stabeno, 1993). Ohtani (1970) gave Oyashio transports of 5-8 × 10 6 m 3 s -1 .…”

Differences in cell viabilities of phytoplankton between spring and late summer in the northwest Pacific Ocean

“…The region where the temperature at 100 m depth was 7 7 less than 5˚C was defined as the Oyashio region (Kawai, 1972). The Oyashio is a cold current that forms the western boundary of the subarctic circulation flowing southwestward along the Kurile Islands (Ohtani, 1970), while the Kuroshio is a warm and western boundary current (Yasuda, 2003). Since the water temperature of Kuroshio waters is more than 14˚C at 200 m depth (Kawai, 1969), the region between the Oyashio and Kuroshio was categorized as the Kuroshio-Oyashio transition region.…”

North Pacific Intermediate Water studied chiefly with radiocarbon

“…In the Tsunogai et al (1993)'s work the anthropogenic carbon dioxide has penetrated into depths down to 1000 m or more in the western North Pacific. The intermediate water was fairly actively studied hitherto by physical oceanographers (e.g., Ohtani, 1970;Ohtani et al, 1972;Kitani, 1973;Favorite et al, 1976;Talley, 1991;Nagata et al, 1992;Yang et al, 1993), and characterized and traced with hydrographic water properties in these studies. However, the studies on its dynamic aspects using radioactive tracers and non-conservative properties are insufficient especially in the western North Pacific.…”