Posted by Alan leonardi on December 18, 2001 at 08:56:07:
In Reply to: Dynamics of the North Hawaiin Ridge Current posted by Raghu Murtugudde on December 03, 2001 at 10:17:51:
Raghu's comments are both timely and astute. Indeed, Jeff Polovina and I talked about these very issues briefly a while back and suggested that a more thorough and interannual study was necessary.
Recent work by Firing et al., suggests that there may be little if any discernible interannual signal in the NHRC. They came to this conclusion using a newly derived time-dependent island rule formulation. Of chief concern to me, however, is that the island rule, by its very nature, is based on linear Sverdrup dynamics. As such, I would not expect it, nor any variant of it, to extract the interannual variability in a WBC with a strong degree of confidence. This issue really needs to be addressed using high resolution data sets and numerical models.
In light of the Xie et al research, the best such models may be coupled atmoshpere ocean models. If we can determine the nature of the interannual variability and atmosphere-ocean coupling, then we can attempt to understand its overall affect on the fisheries in the region.