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Mechanism of Sea Fog Production
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Ocean Currents and Sea Fog
To understand the process of sea fog production, it is essntial to understnad ocean current and air mass around Japan.
As main ocean current, there are four;Kuroshio (warm), Tsushima-Kairyu (warm), Oyashio (cold), and Riman-Kairyu (cold.) Especially two of those, Kuroshio and Oyashio, has taken an important role to produce sea fog.
Influence of Air Mass
During the summer time, one of the main air mass to cover Japan, known as Taiheiyou-Koukiatsu, became dominant. Since this air mass is high atmospheric pressure, the air flow comes "out" from the center of the air mass clockwise. Part of this air-flow would head to Kushiro region as shown on the bottom figure of right.
This air flows first on Kuroshio, which is the warm sea current, so eventually the air would be fully saturated. Then the saturated air would flow over the Oyashio, which is cold ocean current, and the warm saturated air would be cooled suddenly. On the process of this, the air would reach to oversaturated status, and finally the humidity which could not be held as gas would be condenced to sea fog.
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