New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research abstracts

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Estimating the East Auckland Current transport from model winds and the Island Rule

BASIL R. STANTON

National Institute of Water & Atmospheric
Research Ltd
P. O. Box 14 901
Wellington, New Zealand
email: b.stanton@niwa.cri.nz

Abstract  The Island Rule allows the wind-driven ocean transport around New Zealand to be determined from wind stress over the South Pacific. The transport in the western boundary current can be derived from the difference between the island transport and the interior Sverdrup transport to the east. This method has been used to estimate the transport in the East Auckland Current (EAUC) using ECMWF and NCEP model wind-stress data, which are compared with transports derived from TOPEX/Poseidon satellite altimetry and expendable bathythermograph (XBT) sections. The results suggest that the mean transport in the EAUC can be explained by the Sverdrup dynamics implicit in the model results. However the model estimates of interannual variability in the EAUC were generally unrealistic, and some of the reasons for this are examined and possible extensions to the model suggested.

Keywords  East Auckland Current; Island Rule; model winds; Sverdrup transport

New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, 2001, Vol. 35: 531-540

0028-8330/01/3503-0531 $7.00 (c) The Royal Society of New Zealand 2001

PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (779K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)

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