Bahr
Frederick L.
Bahr
Frederick L.
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ArticleShelf-edge frontal structure in the central East China Sea and its impact on low-frequency acoustic propagation(IEEE, 2004-10) Ramp, Steven R. ; Chiu, Ching-Sang ; Bahr, Frederick L. ; Qi, Yiquan ; Dahl, Peter H. ; Miller, James H. ; Lynch, James F. ; Zhang, Renhe ; Zhou, Ji-XunTwo field programs, both parts of the Asian Seas International Acoustics Experiment (ASIAEX), were carried out in the central East China Sea (28 to 30 N, 126 30 to 128 E) during April 2000 and June 2001. The goal of these programs was to study the interactions between the shelf edge environment and acoustic propagation at a wide range of frequencies and spatial scales. The low-frequency across-slope propagation was studied using a synthesis of data collected during both years including conductivity- temperature-depth (CTD) and mooring data from 2000, and XBT, thermistor chain, and wide-band source data from 2001. The water column variability during both years was dominated by the Kuroshio Current flowing from southwest to northeast over the continental slope. The barotropic tide was a mixed diurnal/semidiurnal tide with moderate amplitude compared to other parts of the Yellow and East China Sea. A large amplitude semidiurnal internal tide was also a prominent feature of the data during both years. Bursts of high-frequency internal waves were often observed, but these took the form of internal solitons only once, when a rapid off-shelf excursion of the Kuroshio coincided with the ebbing tide. Two case studies in the acoustic transmission loss (TL) over the continental shelf and slope were performed. First, anchor station data obtained during 2000 were used to study how a Kuroshio warm filament on the shelf induced variance in the transmission loss (TL) along the seafloor in the NW quadrant of the study region. The corresponding modeled single-frequency TL structure explained the significant fine-scale variability in time primarily by the changes in the multipath/multimode interference pattern. The interference was quite sensitive to small changes in the phase differences between individual paths/modes induced by the evolution of the warm filament. Second, the across-slope sound speed sections from 2001 were used to explain the observed phenomenon of abrupt signal attenuation as the transmission range lengthened seaward across the continental shelf and slope. This abrupt signal degradation was caused by the Kuroshio frontal gradients that produced an increasingly downward-refracting sound-speed field seaward from the shelf break. This abrupt signal dropout was explained using normal mode theory and was predictable and source depth dependent. For a source located above the turning depth of the highest-order shelf-trapped mode, none of the propagating modes on the shelf were excited, causing total signal extinction on the shelf.
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ArticleInternal solitons in the northeastern south China Sea. Part I: sources and deep water propagation(IEEE, 2004-10) Ramp, Steven R. ; Tang, Tswen Yung ; Duda, Timothy F. ; Lynch, James F. ; Liu, Antony K. ; Chiu, Ching-Sang ; Bahr, Frederick L. ; Kim, Hyoung-Rok ; Yang, Yiing-JangA moored array of current, temperature, conductivity, and pressure sensors was deployed across the Chinese continental shelf and slope in support of the Asian Seas International Acoustics Experiment. The goal of the observations was to quantify the water column variability in order to understand the along- and across-shore low-frequency acoustic propagation in shallow water. The moorings were deployed from April 21–May 19, 2001 and sampled at 1–5 min intervals to capture the full range of temporal variability without aliasing the internal wave field. The dominant oceanographic signal by far was in fact the highly nonlinear internal waves (or solitons) which were generated near the Batan Islands in the Luzon Strait and propagated 485 km across deep water to the observation region. Dubbed trans-basin waves, to distinguish them from other, smaller nonlinear waves generated locally near the shelf break, these waves had amplitudes ranging from 29 to greater than 140 m and were among the largest such waves ever observed in the world’s oceans. The waves arrived at the most offshore mooring in two clusters lasting 7–8 days each separated by five days when no waves were observed.Within each cluster, two types of waves arrived which have been named type-a and type-b. The type-a waves had greater amplitude than the type-b waves and arrived with remarkable regularity at the same time each day, 24 h apart. The type-b waves were weaker than the type-a waves, arrived an hour later each day, and generally consisted of a single soliton growing out of the center of the wave packet. Comparison with modeled barotropic tides from the generation region revealed that: 1) The two clusters were generated around the time of the spring tides in the Luzon strait; and 2) The type-a waves were generated on the strong side of the diurnal inequality while the type-b waves were generated on the weaker beat. The position of the Kuroshio intrusion into the Luzon Strait may modulate the strength of the waves being produced. As the waves shoaled, the huge lead solitons first split into two solitons then merged together into a broad region of thermocline depression at depths less than 120 m. Elevation waves sprang up behind them as they continued to propagate onshore. The elevation waves also grew out of regions where the locally-generated internal tide forced the main thermocline down near the bottom. The “critical point” where the upper and lower layers were equal was a good indicator of when the depression or elevation waves would form, however this was not a static point, but rather varied in both space and time according to the presence or absence of the internal tides and the incoming trans-basin waves themselves.