FY 1994

Spatial and temporal characteristics of the wind forcing of the Bering Sea

Bond, N.A., J.E. Overland, and P. Turet

J. Climate, 7(7), 1119–1130 (1994)

The surface wind stress over the Bering Sea is estimated for the period 1946-90 from sea level pressure analyses, empirical relationships between the geostrophic wind and the surface wind, and a bulk aerodynamic formula. The focus is on the propagation and variability of the stress and the curl of the stress as a function of frequency. The stress at high frequencies (>0.1 cpd) is dominated by northward- and eastward-propagating disturbances with mean wavelengths of ~2500 and 10,000 km, respectively. At periods of ~10-100 days, the mean propagation is near zero; there are, however, significant interannual variations in the zonal propogation. Wind-driven ocean transports estimated by the Sverdrup method for the deep Bering basin account for ~6 Sv or roughly one-half of the observed transport within the western boundary current along the Kamchatka peninsula. A low-pass-filtered (retaining periods greater than 18 months) time series of the Sverdrup transport exhibits a standard deviation of 25% of the mean.