Study on the premature separation of western boundary current and formation of eastward jet

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Numerical experiments using a 2-layer quasi-geostrophic mode and a primitive equation model were carried out to study the dynamics of oceanic western boundary current separation and formation of the eastward extension jet. There are two types of stable solutions; one of them is the solution in which the eastward jet is formed along the subtropical/subpolar gyre boundary and the other is the prematurely separated jet solution in which the western boundary current separation occurs far upstream of the gyre boundary. It was found that the latitude of the prematurely separated jet was almost independent of model parameters including nonlinearity. Dependence of the jet latitude on the meridional distribution of the wind forcing was investigated and the mechanism determining the jet latitude was discussed.