Subthermocline Eddies in the Kuroshio Extension Region Observed by Mooring Arrays

Abstract

AbstractSubthermocline eddies (STEs), also termed intrathermocline eddies or submesoscale coherent vortices, are lens-shaped eddies with anomalous water properties located in or below the thermocline. Although STEs have been discovered in many parts of the World Ocean, most of them were observed accidentally in hydrographic profiles, and direct velocity measurements are very rare. In this study, dynamic features of STEs in the Kuroshio Extension (KE) region are examined in detail using concurrent temperature/salinity and velocity measurements from mooring arrays. During the moored observation periods of 2004–06 and 2015–19, 11 single-core STEs, including 8 with warm/salty cores and 3 with cold/fresh cores, were captured. The thermohaline properties in their cores suggest that these STEs may originate from the subarctic front and the upstream Kuroshio south of Japan. The estimated radius of these STEs varied from 8 to 66 km with the mean value of ~30 km. The warm/salty STEs seemed to be larger and rotate faster than the cold/fresh ones. In addition to single-core STEs, a dual-core STE was observed in the KE recirculation region, which showed that the upper cold/fresh cores stacked vertically over the lower warm/salty cores. Based on the observed parameters of the STEs, their Rossby number and Burger number were further estimated, with values up to 0.5 and 1, respectively. Furthermore, a low Richardson number O (0.25) was found at the periphery of these STEs, suggesting that shear instability-induced turbulent mixing may be an erosion route for the STEs.