Fig. 2

Difference in SST between the LM periods and the NLM periods in winter from the OISST dataset. The contours indicate the regions where the difference is statistically significant at the 95% confidence level. The gray inset indicates the regions where the SST of the WRF simulation was replaced. The LM and NLM periods are defined in Sect. 2. The regions indicated by the blue box (33.5°N–34.5°N, 136.5°E–138.5°E) and indicated by the red box (32.5°N–33.5°N, 136°E–138°E) are used to define the Kuroshio large meander index (see Sect. 2)