Fig. 7 Schematic representation of the expected barotropic flow in late winter (stippled arrow) along the eastern continental slope off Nansei Islands (Sekine and Kutsuwada, 1994). Ordinary Kuroshio path in the East China Sea that flows out through the Tokara Strait is shown by arrow with oblique lines. Depth contours are also shown.
autumn, which is larger than the Sverdrup transport west to Hawaii Ridge in spring to summer and smaller than it in autumn to winter (Fig. 4b). Development of the baroclinic response of the flow formed by the strong winter wind stress is also detected in late spring to autumn (Fig. 6b). However, annual changes in wind stress west to the Hawaii Ridge and those west to the Izu Ridge have almost similar tendency to those in whole North Pacific, no remarkable local change is formed by these wind stress (Fig. 4). From these results, existence of a vertically homogeneous barotropic flow with large volume transport and small velocity is suggested in winter along the eastern continental slope off Nansei Islands (Fig. 7), which does not flow out through the Tokara Strait. Recently, Kagimoto and Yamagata (1997) pointed out the important role of the JEBAR effect (e.g., Sakamoto and Yamagata, 1996) by use of more realistic numerical model. They showed that the JEBAR effect forms large anticyclonic circulation south of Japan and the resulted seasonal variation in the volume transport of the Kuroshio shows weak maximum in summer and minimum in autumn, of which tendency is almost similar to the observed geostrophic volume transport shown in Fig. 4a.
