Dense Water Formation in the Okhotsk Sea

Lynne D. Talley
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD 0230
9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093-0230
(619) 534-6610; ltalley@ucsd.edu

Dan L. Rudnick
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD 0230
9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093-0230
(619) 534-7669; drudnick@ucsd.edu

Included here are the first few figures of our proposal to the National Science Foundation for work in the Okhotsk Sea. We have been informed that the project will be funded, with funding starting in late 1998 for deployment in summer, 1999.

The full text of the proposal will be made available in early July.

Figures (only those available as electronic files).

Figure 1a. Okhotsk Sea geography.

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Figure 1b. Proposed U.S. observations for 1998 to 2000, including the shelf landers (Talley/Rudnick) (red circles) and hydrographic stations (Talley/Rudnick) (blue lines) Kitani's (1973) dense shelf water observations are shown with light blue diamonds (full station pattern is included in Fig. 2a). Green and red diamonds indicate Japanese/U.S. current meter moorings planned for this period (Wakatsuchi/Riser). Also shown is the 500 meter isobath and a very schematic version of the main currents in the Okhotsk Sea, based on Luchin (1993) (reproduced in Talley and Nagata, 1995). Light blue shaded regions indicate the coastal and Kashevarov Bank polynyas.

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Figure 2. Bottom density at depths less than 300 m, based on Kitani's summer data from 1969 and 1970, Riser's CTD data from April, 1995, and POI's CTD data from August, 1994. Despite the non-synopticity of the cruises, they contour together remarkably well. Red dots indicate that the potential temperature at the bottom is colder than -1.0\(deC. Blue dots indicate that the water depth is greater than 300 m. Green circles show the stations used in Fig. 8.

Figure 3. Salinity at 27.0 sigma theta showing lowest salinity in the northwestern Okhotsk Sea. (From Talley, 1991, with additional stations from Kitani's [1973] data set.)

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