CoAuthors

Kentaro Yokoo (ESST, Kyushu Univ., Japan); Xi-Feng Wang (ESST, Kyushu Univ., Japan); Cho-Teng Liu (Nat. Taiwan Univ., Taiwan); Takeshi Matsuno (RIAM, Kyushu Univ., Japan); Hsien-Wen Chen (Central Police Univ., Taiwan); Ken-ichi Fukudome (Nat. Inst. Tech., Toyama Col., Japan); Dong-Jiing Doong (Nat. Cheng Kung Univ., Taiwan)

Since 2008, an ADCP has been deployed at the bottom of “TaiMa” ferry, crossing the Taiwan Strait daily, to observe the volume transport in the strait (Chen et al., 2016). The obtained volume transport is linearly related well to the cross-strait sea level difference determined by tide gauges, and also approximately agrees with the along-track component of the wind stress without significant time lags. These suggest that the along-strait wind stress balances with the frictional force of the along-strait geostrophic current, which is proportional to the cross-strait sea level difference. Furthermore, discrepancy of the volume transport from the linear relationship with the along-strait local wind stress is compared with the SSHA field around Taiwan and along-track Jason-2 PISTACH altimetry data. Unfortunately, the SSHA filed is not reliable enough in the strait due to sparse sampling, Nevertheless, significant SSHA to the south of Taiwan, as a result of the Kuroshio variations caused by interaction with westward-propagating mesoscale eddies, are found related with such wind-independent volume transport variations with periods of several weeks.