The Tasman Front is a relatively warm water east-flowing surface current and thermal boundary that separates the Coral Sea to the north and the Tasman Sea to the south.

Naming

The name was proposed by Denham and Crook in 1976, to describe a thermal front that extends from Australia and

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

between the Coral Sea and Tasman Sea.

Geography

Originating in the edge of the East Australian Current (EAC), the Tasman Front

meander A meander is one of a series of regular sinuous curves in the channel of a river or other watercourse. It is produced as a watercourse erodes the sediments of an outer, concave bank ( cut bank) and deposits sediments on an inner, convex ba ...

s eastward between longitudes 152° E and 164° E and latitudes 31° S and 37° S, then reattaches to the coastline at New Zealand, forming the East Auckland Current.

Topography Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sc ...

plays a dominant role in establishing the Tasman Front. Data on the Tasman Front shows that the path of the front is influenced in part by the forcing of the flow over the major ridge systems. Meanders observed in the Tasman Front can be driven by meridional flows along ridges such as those observed at the New Caledonia Trough (166° E) and the

Norfolk Ridge The Norfolk Ridge is a long submarine ridge running between New Caledonia and New Zealand, about 1300 km off the east-coast of Australia. It is part of a complex region of ridges between the crust of the Pacific Basin and the continental c ...

(167° E). Abyssal currents also drive meanders associated with the Lord Howe Rise (161° E) and Dampier Ridge (159° E).

Oceanography

There have been a number of observational and modeling studies on this front in addition to a number of paleo-oceanographic studies of marine sediments. Contrarily, there have been few biological observational studies, but those have been conducted resulted in relating the physical features of the front to properties of fish communities. Likewise, there are even fewer studies relating biogeochemical properties to physical processes of the Tasman Front.

References

{{Ocean Physical oceanography Tasman Sea Currents of the Pacific Ocean

Naming

Geography

Oceanography

See also

References