by: Byoung Ju Choi and Fadli Syamsudin

1. Background

           The TOPEX/Poseidon altimetric data has been widely used for several applications, such as ocean circulation,  El Nino/La Nina studies, sea level monitoring for environmental safety warning, simulation of larvae dynamics, and so on.  This has been diverging from its first specific mission to study the world's ocean.
            There is a number of improvements that has been made on the satellite performances and algorithms  in order to be useful for studying ocean circulation in the scale of basins and gyres.  Nowdays, hopely  we can use this altimetric data for smaller scales of physical processes in the ocean. This paper will focus the study on the Eddies formation and Front movement due to present of colder Polar water from Artic Ocean in the East Sea. Those two fenomena are having a great impact on the climatic change in the adjacent area and drastically affect the fisheries productivity in the region.
               The objective of this study is to determine  surface ocean current, eddies, and inter-annual variation of the Polar Front between cold and warm water region in the East Sea.

2. Methodology
            We used UNESCO Training Module for application of TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite Altimetry to produce maps of eddies and other geostrophic features developed by Donald R. Kobayashi, et al (1999).  The method can compute sea level height from measured TOPEX altimeter data. We create a simple fortran program to calculate its East-West and North-South velocity components from where we put it out our current vector plot by Generic Mapping Tool (GMT).
             To study front movement we used Sea Surface Temperature data taken from.........
            We are also comparing our result with observational data and sea level height anomaly and its geostrophic current taken from interactive map in the internet produced by Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research (CCAR), University of Colorado.

3. Result
3.1 Our Result

Annual Sea Surface Height Anomali:

• 1993   
• 1994
• 1995
• 1996
• 1997
• 1998
• 1999

3.2  Interactive Map from Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research (CCAR), University of Colorado

Sea surface height anomali (cm) and its geostrophic current during 1998:

• January 15
• February 15
• March 15
• April 15
• May 15
• June 15
• July 15
• August 15
• September 15
• October 15
• Nopember 15
• December 15

 

3.3 Observational Result.
 
 

4. Discussion

5. Conclusion

*References

1. L.L. Fu, E.J. Christensen, C.A. Yamarone Jr., et al: TOPEX/POSEIDON mission overview, Journal of Geophysical  Research, 99, no. C12, 24369- 24381.

2. D.R. Kobayashi, J.J. Polovina: UNESCO Training Module for application of TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite Altimetry to produce maps of eddies and other geostrophic features for fisheries research, National Marine Fisheries Service Honolulu Laboratory, NOAA, 1999. (http://www.nmfs.hawaii.edu/eco/unesco1.html).