North pacific current
From Glossary of Meteorology
North Pacific Current
(Also known as the West Wind Drift.) The eastward current that forms the northern part of the North Pacific subtropical gyre.
It originates from the Kuroshio Extension east of the Emperor Seamounts (170°W) and maintains the Arctic Polar Front with the Aleutian or Pacific Subarctic Current, with which it experiences much mixing as it proceeds eastward. A broad band of flow some 2000 km wide, it feeds its water into the California Current on approaching the North American coast.
