FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 70, NO. 3 



Table 5. — Mean current index, Arf, and standard devi- 

 ation, s, Honolulu-minus-San Francisco, for selected 

 "climatic" periods (see text). 



Years 



1905-14 

 1915-25 

 1924^8 

 1939-41 

 1942-49 

 1950^4 

 1955-69 



! (cm) 



5.3 

 6.1 

 3.6 

 6.3 

 4.8 

 3.4 

 5.6 



North Pacific Ocean which includes the Cali- 

 fornia Current, using the most appropriate long- 

 term records of sea level available. 



Monthly sea level differences for a 65-year pe- 

 riod (1905-69) between Honolulu and San Fran- 

 cisco and for 20 years (1947-59, 1961-67) be- 

 tween Hilo and Avila were computed to indicate 

 the strength and fluctuations in the monthly geo- 

 strophic current around the eastern limb of the 

 anticyclonic gyre of the North Pacific Ocean. 

 The premise is that through the geostrophic re- 

 lationship the nonseasonal variations of sea level 

 difference indicate proportional changes in the 

 current. 



The distance betw^een tide stations in each pair 

 is about 3,900 km. The current structure is not 

 uniform across the geographic region. Varia- 

 bility in the records is introduced by local con- 

 ditions, and smoothing has been used to minimize 

 these effects. Therefore, the sea level differences 

 presented here can be indicative of only large- 

 scale changes in circulation and conclusions re- 

 garding the circulation have been confined to pe- 

 riods of the more persistent highly anomalous 

 periods in the sea level differences. In the trop- 

 ical and western North Pacific where islands are 

 more suitably located with respect to the currents 

 the procedures followed here might be used to 

 study variations in the Equatorial Currents and 

 the Kuroshio. 



In the Northeast Pacific there is no indepen- 

 dent set of long-term observations to substanti- 

 ate the inferences regarding current changes 

 that have been drawn and no other islands for 

 improving the network of tide stations. This 

 lack emphasizes the desirability of frequent sec- 

 tions of subsurface observations between Cali- 



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