• 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

    An asymmetric upwind flow, Yellow Sea Warm Current : 2. Arrested topographic waves in response to the northwesterly wind

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    2010JC006514.pdf (3.802Mb)
    Date
    2011-04-29
    Author
    Lin, Xiaopei  Concept link
    Yang, Jiayan  Concept link
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citable URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/1912/4607
    As published
    https://doi.org/10.1029/2010JC006514
    DOI
    10.1029/2010JC006514
    Keyword
     Yellow Sea Warm Current; Asymmetric upwind flow; Arrested topographic waves 
    Abstract
    A warm and salty water mass exists along the Yellow Sea Trough (YST) in winter. This oceanic water mass is distinct from the ambient shelf water and is distributed on the western side of the YST. It has long been reasoned that a Yellow Sea Warm Current (YSWC) must exist. A recent observational study indeed supports the existence of the YSWC and shows that its position moved progressively westward as the warm water intrudes further shoreward toward the northwest. In this paper, we explain mechanisms for sustaining the YSWC and for its westward displacement. The northwesterly monsoonal wind prevails in the winter and is directed against the YSWC. The cross-trough scale is small compared with the spatial scale of monsoonal variation, so one can assume, to the first order, that the wind stress is uniform across the trough. The curl of depth-averaged wind stress has opposite signs on the two sides of the trough. Consequently, two oppositely rotating gyres develop initially and they converge along the trough giving rise to a barotropic upwind flow. But this upwind flow lasts only for a few days as the two gyres evolve and propagate as topographic waves. For a northerly wind, both gyres move westward since the positive (negative) potential vorticity flux on the western (eastern) side of the trough pushes the water toward shore (trough). If the bottom friction is negligible, the steady response becomes a large anticyclonic gyre over the trough and the upwind current is squeezed toward the shore line. In this case, no YSWC is sustained along or near the trough. This runaway warm current can be arrested by a moderate bottom friction. We therefore propose that the YSWC is actually arrested topographic waves in response to local wind stress forcing.
    Description
    Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2011. 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 116 (2011): C04027, doi:10.1029/2010JC006514.
    Collections
    • Physical Oceanography (PO)
    Suggested Citation
    Journal of Geophysical Research 116 (2011): C04027
     

    Related items

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

    • Thumbnail

      An asymmetric upwind flow, Yellow Sea Warm Current : 1. New observations in the western Yellow Sea 

      Lin, Xiaopei; Yang, Jiayan; Guo, Jingsong; Zhang, Zhixin; Yin, Yuqi; Song, Xiangzhou; Zhang, Xiaohui (American Geophysical Union, 2011-04-29)
      The winter water mass along the Yellow Sea Trough (YST), especially on the western side of the trough, is considerably warmer and saltier than the ambient shelf water mass. This observed tongue-shape hydrographic feature ...
    • Thumbnail

      Wind-driven circulation in a shelf valley. Part I : Mechanism of the asymmetrical response to along-shelf winds in opposite directions 

      Zhang, Weifeng; Lentz, Steven J. (American Meteorological Society, 2017-12-08)
      Motivated by observations in Hudson shelf valley showing stronger onshore than offshore flows, this study investigates wind-driven flows in idealized shallow shelf valleys. This first part of a two-part sequence focuses ...
    • Thumbnail

      An open-ocean forcing in the East China and Yellow seas 

      Ma, Chao; Wu, Dexing; Lin, Xiaopei; Yang, Jiayan; Ju, Xia (American Geophysical Union, 2010-12-21)
      Recent studies have demonstrated that the annual mean barotropic currents over the East China and Yellow seas (ECYS) are forced primarily by the oceanic circulation in the open-ocean basin through the Kuroshio Current (KC), ...
    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