Chiwing Hui

Oct 30, 2024 | agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com | Xianliang Chen |Jianping Gan |James McWilliams |Chiwing Hui

1 Introduction In the northern western Pacific Ocean (WPO), there are complex upper-layer current and middle-layer undercurrent circulations as illustrated in Figure 1. In the upper layer, the westward North Equatorial Current (NEC) bifurcates into the northward Kuroshio Current (KC) and the southward Mindanao Current (MC), forming the NEC–KC–MC (NKM) circulation system near the east coast of the Philippine Islands (Hu et al., 2020; Kashino et al., 2009; Nitani, 1972; Qiu & Lukas, 1996).