Upper ocean water properties and currents along paired sections in the Northern California Current, September 1999-2003

As part of the U. S. GLOBEC NorthEast Pacific\ud Program we made repeated seasonal hydrographic surveys in\ud the northern California Current system between July\ud 1997 and September 2003. These surveys included sampling\ud along a pair of hydrographic sections, one north (at 44.6ºN)\ud and one south (at 41.9ºN) of Cape Blanco (Figure 1) in\ud September of five years (1999-2003). The coastal upwelling\ud associated with the California Current experiences maximum\ud upwelling during summer, and usually continues through much\ud of September; upwelling is usually stronger at 42ºN than at\ud 45ºN. One purpose of this report is to show\ud differences and similarities between the coastal upwelling\ud domains north and south of Cape Blanco. We present graphical\ud summaries of the physical oceanographic and biochemical\ud observations along both sections, principally in the form of\ud zonal sections (0-160 km from shore, 0-150 m depth). We also\ud show offshore profiles of a few selected properties, and some\ud characteristic diagrams (T-S, oxygen-S, etc.). Similar reports\ud showing results for mid-summer and for spring have already\ud been published (Fleischbein et al., 2005a, b)