• Login
    About WHOAS
    View Item 
    •   WHOAS Home
    • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    • Physical Oceanography (PO)
    • View Item
    •   WHOAS Home
    • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    • Physical Oceanography (PO)
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of WHOASCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesKeywordsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesKeywords

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    On the mechanism of the cyclonic circulation in the Gulf of Tonkin in the summer

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    2007JC004208.pdf (399.6Kb)
    Date
    2008-09-18
    Author
    Wu, Dexing  Concept link
    Wang, Yue  Concept link
    Lin, Xiaopei  Concept link
    Yang, Jiayan  Concept link
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citable URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3764
    As published
    https://doi.org/10.1029/2007JC004208
    DOI
    10.1029/2007JC004208
    Keyword
     Gulf of Tonkin; Cyclonic circulation; Potential vorticity 
    Abstract
    The circulation in the Gulf of Tonkin had been traditionally considered to be anticyclonic in the summer. This view was challenged recently by results from reanalyzing observational data, which clearly revealed that the circulation is cyclonic in all seasons. The surface wind stress is monsoonal, southwesterly in the summer and reversed in the winter. It remains unexplained why the circulation is always cyclonic, while the surface forcing reverses seasonally. In this study, we hypothesize that the inflow through Qiongzhou Strait, a shallow and narrow channel between Hainan Island and the Chinese mainland, is responsible for maintaining the cyclonic circulation in the summer. Besides the requirements of mass conservation and bathymetry constraint, this flow, even with a rather small transport, carries a considerable amount of potential vorticity (PV) into the gulf, and the integral constraint of PV requires the presence of a frictional torque to be associated with a cyclonic circulation. Several numerical experiments with a three-dimensional model have been conducted to test this hypothesis. When the westward flow through Qiongzhou Strait is blocked, the model simulates an anticyclonic circulation in the summer. When the westward flow through Qiongzhou Strait is allowed, the circulation changes to a cyclonic one, consistent with our hypothesis.
    Description
    Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2008. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 113 (2008): C09029, doi:10.1029/2007JC004208.
    Collections
    • Physical Oceanography (PO)
    Suggested Citation
    Journal of Geophysical Research 113 (2008): C09029
     

    Related items

    Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.

    • Thumbnail

      Investigating the local atmospheric response to a realistic shift in the Oyashio Sea surface Temperature Front 

      Smirnov, Dimitry; Newman, Matthew; Alexander, Michael A.; Kwon, Young-Oh; Frankignoul, Claude (American Meteorological Society, 2015-02-01)
      The local atmospheric response to a realistic shift of the Oyashio Extension SST front in the western North Pacific is analyzed using a high-resolution (HR; 0.25°) version of the global Community Atmosphere Model, version ...
    • Thumbnail

      The mechanical energy input to the ocean induced by tropical cyclones 

      Liu, Ling Ling; Wang, Wei; Huang, Rui Xin (American Meteorological Society, 2008-06)
      Wind stress and tidal dissipation are the most important sources of mechanical energy for maintaining the oceanic general circulation. The contribution of mechanical energy due to tropical cyclones can be a vitally important ...
    • Thumbnail

      Storm signatures in coastal ponds and marshes over the late Holocene 

      Castagno, Katherine (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 2019-09)
      Tropical cyclones pose a growing threat to coastal populations, especially as both populations and infrastructure are increasingly concentrated along the eastern coast of the United States. This thesis seeks to characterize ...
    All Items in WHOAS are protected by original copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. WHOAS also supports the use of the Creative Commons licenses for original content.
    A service of the MBLWHOI Library | About WHOAS
    Contact Us | Send Feedback | Privacy Policy
    Core Trust Logo