What is Happening in the East Sea (Japan Sea)?: Recent Chemical Observations during CREAMS 93-96

CREAMS (Circulation Research of the East Asian Marginal Seas) Expeditions have provided a rare opportunity to carry out precise measurements of salinity, temperature and chemical tracers extensively in all major basins of the East Sea (Japan Sea) in 1993-1996 for the first time in more than 60 years since Uda's investigation (Uda, 1934). Studies revealed unequivocal evidence that the East Sea Proper Water (ESPW), previously known as a single homogeneous water mass, is indeed made of several distinct water masses. CREAMS data further confirmed the earlier observations of Gamo et al. (1986) that properties in Deep Waters in the East Sea have been changing during at least the last 25 years. There is evidence, especially from the analysis of the DO profile, that these changes may result from a major change in the mode of deep water formation: from bottom water formation in the past to intermediate/deep water formation in recent years. The causes for these changes are not clear at the present time, but nay include natural variation and may also reflect recent global changes in regional scale. A moving-boundary box model is presented to describe current observations, predicting the turnover time of the total deep and bottom waters to the cold surface waters to be ${\sim}$80 years in 1996.