of this and the following days, however, reveals an indentation toward the Strait 

 entrance of the local isotherms, a pattern indicative of a southbound cool current. 

 From these maps alone, no conclusive decision as to current direction could be 

 reached. 



Extending northwestward from the southern tip of Kamchatka is a suggestion 

 of a cool current. The cold Oyashio Current is known to flow southwestward along 

 the eastern coast of Kamchatka. The cool current suggested by the IR analysis 



may be branching from the main Oyashio Current. These suggested currents, and 

 a southbound return current off the east coast of Sakhalin, are indicated in Figure 5-4. 

 It should be noted that both this return current, and a southward current through 

 the Tatar Strait are indicated in standard current maps. 



In the northeastern corner of the Sea of Okhotsk is a large area of relatively 

 warm water -which does not appear in the analyses of later passes. 



Figure 5-5 shows the analysis for this same area one day later, using data from 

 Pass 65 of TIROS VII. Useful coverage here is considerably less than that of the 

 previous day, while the minimum nadir angle is a high 35 , 10 higher than in Pass 51. 



Again Sakhalin is surrounded by a band of relatively warm water, but the 

 warmer water at the northern entrance to the Tatar Strait is no longer evident. The 

 presumed cool branch of the Oyashio Current appears to extend further north, while 

 the warm waters in the northeastern sector of the Sea of Okhotsk can no longer be 

 identified. It is interesting to note that the small scale cold and warm spots, seen in 

 the area to the east of the warm water surrounding Sakhalin, can still be identified. 

 The generally lower temperatures throughout the field of view may be partially 

 attributed to the increased nadir angle. Another possible cause for these lower 

 temperatures is the periodic fluctuation in Channel 2 degradation with the orbit-sun 

 phase geometry. During this period there was a rapid downward excursion in sensor 

 sensitivity (see Fig. 7 5, Ref. 6) which would have the effect of decreased Channel 2 

 temperature values. Upper air data from the Alexandrovsk station on Sakhalin 

 indicated no change in air mass between the two days. 



The complete disappearance of the northeastern warm waters can not be 



accounted for. Considering the high level of consistency of the remainder of the 



17 

 map, this disappearance may, at least in part, be real. Other investigators 



have found, however, that the maximum 24 hour temperature change that one can 



expect over any extensive region is about 2 K. 



26 



