New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research abstracts
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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