Journal of The School of Marine Science and Technology,Vol.3 No.2
Study on Relationship between Surface Wind and Sea Surface Temperature Fields in the Northwestern Pacific using High Resolution Data
Naoki MORIMOTO, Kunio KUTSUWADA and Minoru KASAHARA
Abstract
Surface wind/wind-stress gridded data with high-spatial resolution are constructed by satellite scatterometer
data and used to investigate whether there is a new type of relationships between surface wind and sea surface
temperature fields in the northwestern Pacific region. The new data set of wind/wind-stress has spatial resolution
of 0.5~0.5grid, which is higher than that of the previous one (1~1)to detect detailed spatial features in the
Kuroshio region south of Japan.
Results reveal that in the 12-month averaged (March 2003to February2004)field,areas of positive wind-stress
curl and strong wind speed are found near the Kuroshio path south of Japan, and they have significantly high
correlation with sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) field. These suggest a new type of ocean-atmosphere
interaction mechanism that the ocean plays an active role rather than a passive one considered previously.Similar
comparisons made for different time-averaged fields exhibit no evident relationships between the wind-stress curl
or wind speed and SSTA.