SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WIND FORCING OF THE BERING SEA

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 approximately 2500 and 10 000 km, respectively. At periods of approximately 10-100 days, the mean propagation is near zero; there are, however, significant interannual variations in the zonal propagation. Wind-driven ocean transports estimated by the Sverdrup method for the deep Bering basin account for approximately 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.