salty surface waters prone to sink and cause convection. The temperature range of the sinking North Pacific Subtropical Mode Waters characteristically falls between 16 °C and 19 °C, however exact temperatures and depths to which these waters sink varies annually depending on the efficiency of water transportation by the extension, which is a function of atmospheric and mesoscale eddy conditions. The resulting homogeneous water mass typically separates the seasonal pycnocline from the surface waters in the mid to late summer months, remaining stratified below the warmer surface waters until shoaling back towards the surface with the mixed layer due to storm perturbation in the fall and winter. The contrast between the temperatures of these stratified vertical layers can be discernable such that the lateral advection of mode water can be traced for thousands of kilometers. Mode water formation is variable and largely dependent on the flow intensity of the Kuroshio Extension and atmospheric heat flux efficiencies. Heat flux processes sometimes experience feedbacks that enhance water temperature contrasts and can cause sea surface temperature features to last well past the end of the boreal winter. For example, with residually cooled surface waters in the late spring and early summer months, warm moist air from the south can cause low cloud formation and reflection of solar radiation, extending temporal sea surface cooling. The Kuroshio Extension is a dynamic but relatively unstable system, with variability in the associated bifurcation latitude occurring on interannual time scales. The cause of these variations and their effects on the surface flow and total transport of waters has been studied extensively, with recent advances in sea surface height satellite altimetry methods allowing for observational studies on larger timescales. Studies suggest that more northerly bifurcation latitudes have been historically correlated with greater surface water transport and mode water formation, associated with less meandering and more direct flow paths closer to the coasts of Japan and Taiwan during the wintertime months. Climate change Climate change, specifically with respect to increasing sea surface temperatures and decreasing salinity, has been predicted to strengthen the surface flow of the Kuroshio Current as well as other western boundary currents across the Pacific. The predicted effects of warming surface oceans may result in differing impacts between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; the Atlantic is predicted to experience a slowing of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation while the Pacific western boundary currents, including the Kuroshio Current,