FISHERIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE,MOA,TAIWAN

The quasi-synoptic data obtained from NOAA/AVHRR sea surface temperature (SST) imageries, OrbView-2/SeaWiFS ocean color imageries, and in-situ hydrographic data were applied to investigate the spatio-temporal distribution, of Kuroshio subsurface water and its associated the form of upwelling region (cold eddy) in the summertime. Analyses of the successive AVHRR and SeaWiFS satellite imageries concluded that the corresponding hydrographic patterns and magnitudes of the satellite-derived cold eddy distributions showed a remarkable coincident with ship-observed data. Surface chlorophyll a concentrations from SeaWiFS imageries ranged between 0.61 and 1.31 mg/m³ with higher in the Kuroshio upwelling water than in the vicinity. The sea surface temperature gradient from AVHRR imageries in the Kuroshio upwelling region ranged from 19 to 21 °C. The maximum chlorophyll a concentration of all hydrographic surveys was 1.99 mg/m³ at 35 m depth and occurred in the Kuroshio upwelling region west of the Pengchiayu Island. The subsurface chlorophyll maximum (SCM) layers were between 10 and 60 m in the southern East China Sea. However, the SCM was shallower than 30 m and usually extended to the sea surface in the Kuroshio upwelling region. Therefore, the multi-sensors imageries derived from the SeaWiFS ocean color and AVHRR SST data can be a powerful tool to identify some important hydrographic patterns, ex. the Kuroshio upwelling, and cold eddy.