Influence of Current Width Variation on the Annual Mean Transport of the East Sakhalin Current: A Simple Model

Recent observations suggest that the annual mean southward transport of the East Sakhalin Current (ESC) is significantly larger than the annual mean Sverdrup transport. Motivated by this observational result, transport of a western boundary current has been investigated using a simple numerical model with a western slope. This transport is defined as the instantaneous barotropic transport integrated from the western boundary to the offshore point where the barotropic velocity vanishes. The model, forced by seasonally varying wind stress, exhibits an annual mean of the western boundary current transport that is larger than that of the Sverdrup transport, as observed. The southward transport from October to March in the model nearly equals the instantaneous Sverdrup transport, while the southward transport from April to September decreases slowly. Although the Sverdrup transport in July vanishes, the southward transport in summer nearly maintains the annual mean Sverdrup transport, because the barotropic Rossby wave cannot intrude on the western slope. This summer transport causes the larger annual mean. Although there are some uncertainties in the estimation of the Sverdrup transport in the Sea of Okhotsk, the seasonal variation of the southward transport in the model is qualitatively similar to the observations.