Recent advances in understanding the circulation and hydrography of the East China Sea

Abstract

The physical oceanography of the East China Sea (ECS) has been studied extensively through comprehensive observing programmes conducted in the 1990s, allowing clarification of the major oceanographic processes involved in establishing the hydrography and circulation. An overview of the general circulation and hydrography in the ECS is given here, mainly based on the new observational results and with special attention to the Kuroshio bifurcation north-east of Taiwan and south-west of Kyushu and the major currents in the outer continental shelf. A new schematic circulation pattern of the ECS is sketched using these observations. The oceanographic conditions and fisheries environments of the ECS are not only seasonally variable because of the response of the basin to the seasonally varying atmospheric conditions, but also spatially and temporally complicated because of the wide spectrum of phenomena that coexist with various scales.