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The Japan Sea: A Changing Pacific Asian Marginal Sea

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Book cover Evolution of Marine Coastal Ecosystems under the Pressure of Global Changes
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Abstract

The Japan Sea includes its own deep-water formation mechanics and a thermohaline circulation system similar to those of the Mediterranean Sea. Long-term trends of warming and decreasing oxygen concentration owing to global warming have been reported in the deep water of the Japan Sea. Although the minimum oxygen decrease rate of about 1000 m suggests a relatively active supply of new deep water to the depths, the overall deep-water formation has been stagnant since the 1970s throughout the water column. In addition to the gradual linear trends, interdecadal variation occurs in the temperature and oxygen concentration of the abyssal Japan Sea. The correlation between the interdecadal variation and the Arctic oscillation index indicates that the deep-water formation in the Japan Sea is modulated by Arctic oscillation via sea surface temperature in the East China Sea. This is an example of a teleconnection system on the marginal seas scale. For these reasons, we propose a collective name for this system: the Pacific Asian marginal seas system.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the members of the local organizing committee of the Coast Bordeaux 2017 and the 17th French–Japanese Oceanography Symposium. Part of this study was supported by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund of Ministry of the Environment, Japan (2-1604) and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 18H03741.

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Correspondence to Tomoharu Senjyu .

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Senjyu, T. (2020). The Japan Sea: A Changing Pacific Asian Marginal Sea. In: Ceccaldi, HJ., Hénocque, Y., Komatsu, T., Prouzet, P., Sautour, B., Yoshida, J. (eds) Evolution of Marine Coastal Ecosystems under the Pressure of Global Changes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43484-7_3

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