A sensitivity study of the dense shelf water formation in the Okhotsk Sea
[1] Sensitivity of Dense Shelf Water (DSW) formation to tidal mixing around the Kuril Straits, wind stress, and river runoff in the Okhotsk Sea is examined by an ice-ocean coupled model. Horizontal resolution of the model is set to 3–8 km in the northern Okhotsk Sea for well resolving the coastal polynyas which is believed to be the principal region of DSW formation. The model shows a good performance in terms of sea ice production and the consequent DSW formation. DSW is also found to be formed in the offshore region apart from the coastal polynya. DSW is defined independently for each experiment such that it identifies the water influenced by brine. By introducing such definition the sensitivity of the DSW formation is assessed separately for change of density and that of formation rate. The density of DSW exhibits high sensitivity to all the elements considered herein, while its formation rate is sensitive only to winds. Winds affect the DSW formation rate mainly by influencing that occurs in the offshore region.
Barotropic Response of the Sea of Okhotsk to Wind Forcing
We have examined wind-induced circulation in the Sea of Okhotsk using a barotropic model that contains realistic topography with a resolution of 9.25 km. The monthly wind stress field calculated from daily European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) Re-Analysis data is used as the forcing, and the integration is carried out for 20 days until the circulation attains an almost steady state. In the case of November (a representative for the winter season from October to March), southward currents of velocity 0.1–0.3 m s−1 occur along the bottom contours off the east of Sakhalin Island. The currents are mostly confined to the shelf (shallower than 200 m) and extend as far south as the Hokkaido coast. In the July case (a representative for the summer season from April to September), significant currents do not occur, even in the shallow shelves. The simulated southward current over the east Sakhalin shelf appears to correspond to the near-shore branch of the East Sakhalin Current (ESC), which was observed with the surface drifters. These seasonal variations simulated in our experiments are consistent with the observations of the ESC. Dynamically, the simulated ESC is interpreted as the arrested topographic wave (ATW), which is the coastally trapped flow driven by steady alongshore wind stress. The volume transport of the simulated ESC over the shelf reaches about 1.0 Sv (1 Sv = 106 m3s−1) in the winter season, which is determined by the integrated onshore Ekman transport in the direction from which shelf waves propagate.
Selective and sensitive TNT sensors using biomimetic polydiacetylene-coated CNT-FETs.
Miniaturized smart sensors that can perform sensitive and selective real-time monitoring of target analytes are tremendously valuable for various sensing applications. We developed selective nanocoatings by combining trinitrotoluene (TNT) receptors bound to conjugated polydiacetylene (PDA) polymers with single-walled carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (SWNT-FET). Selective binding events between the TNT molecules and phage display derived TNT receptors were effectively transduced to sensitive SWNT-FET conductance sensors through the PDA coating layers. The resulting sensors exhibited an unprecedented 1 fM sensitivity toward TNT in real time, with excellent selectivity over various similar aromatic compounds. Our biomimetic receptor coating approach may be useful for the development of sensitive and selective micro- and nanoelectronic sensor devices for various other target analytes.