Coastal impacts of offshore meso-scale eddies through the Kuroshio variation

In order to assess the influence of offshore meso-scale eddies in coastal areas facing to the Kuroshio, temperature data in the Bungo Channel and altimetry sea surface height (SSH) data are analyzed. It is east of Okinawa, far away from the Bungo Channel, where the SSH variation is most strongly correlated with the coastal temperature changes with periods of several weeks to months. Complex empirical orthogonal function analysis of the SSH variation indicated strong coherency with the coastal temperature for a train of meso-scale eddies propagating northeastward from east of Okinawa to south of Shikoku, suggesting that variations of the Kuroshio in front of the Bungo Channel induce the coastal temperature changes. However, in areas other than east of Okinawa and south of Shikoku, larger SSH variations which would not correlate well with the coastal temperature variations are detected showing that cross correlation with the coastal temperature is not significant in these regions.