The westward intrusion of south Pacific water at the western tip of the New Guinea Island

From the eastern Indonesian cruise from November 14 to 23, 2007, CTD （conductivity, temperature, depth profiler）/ADCP （acoustic Doppler current profiler）casting and seawater sampling were done at 25 stations around Waigeo Island near New Guinea Island. It was found overall westward intrusion of the south Pacific waters into the Seram Sea and southward spreading of the north and south Pacific waters into the Seram Sea. There is westward residual flow along the channel between Waigeo and New Guinea within upper 200 m with the maximum speed up to 50 cm/s, and much weaker eastward flow in the lower layer （〈 10 cm/s） due to blocking by the shallow sill at the west of the Dampier Strait. The abrupt change of bottom topography induces active horizontal and vertical mixing which results in a three-layered current system with a major through-flow of-0.99 Sv （Sv = 106 ma/s） into the Seram Sea; the transports in the upper and the lower layers are -1.14 Sv and -0.24 Sv （westward）, respectively, and in the middle there is a return flow with the transoort of ＋0.39 Sv （eastward）.

Water masses in the far western equatorial Pacific during the winters of 2010 and 2012

Conductivity-temperature-depth（CTD）data obtained during the 2010 La Nina winter and the 2012 normal winter,combined with concurrent Argo profiling float data,provide a quasi-synoptic description of the water mass distributions and their variations in the far western equatorial Pacific Ocean.The water mass connection between the western Pacific and the east Indonesian seas is emphasized.Analysis indicates that the North Pacific Tropical Water（NPTW,S〉34.9）carried by the Mindanao Current southward and the South Pacific Tropical Water（SPTW,S〉35.1）from the southern hemisphere meet in the area.Observations suggest that the southward transport of the NPTW is stronger in 2010 than in 2012 due to enhanced advection of the Mindanao Current.The distribution of SPTW,which crosses the equator in the northwest direction and retroflects back to the interior Pacific Ocean,is found to retreat from 4°–5°N in2012 to 2°–3°N in 2010 La Ni？a peak in the 130°E section.A relatively fresh tropical subsurface water is identified in between the NPTW and the SPTW,moving eastward with the North Equatorial Countercurrent into the equatorial Pacific Ocean.However,the salinity maximum of this subsurface fresh water is found to decrease eastward,suggesting that the salinity maximum is generated either by strong diapycnal mixing or by isopycnal mixing of temporally entrained Indonesian sea water into the area.